The Belkan war: alternative story
by Vergeltern
Summary: It did not take great mans to begin wars nor to end then. But to turn the tide of one they are required. This is an alternate history for the Belkan war. Follow an other sixth Unit of Ustio, a different Galm team, as their actions will turn the tide in a twisted, but maybe better way. This story is rated T, but can content some M rated chapter with some depicted violent scenes.
1. List of planes and weapons

**This is not a chapter, nor a prologue. I will do a little list of the planes (I will just put the real world speed in km h as characteristic, the gauge are not that important), Weapons, and other shortcuts I will use. But I must warn you, this list is a non-exhaustive and could be completed by the changes I will do to the canon of ace combat zero.**

 **So, let's begin with the fighters. They all have 800 rounds of gun ammo**

 **F-5E Tiger II (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 1700 km/h

A low cost, lightweight tactical fighter with respectable capability in all areas. Easy to fly and maintain, the "Tiger II" is employed in air forces around the globe.

MSSL x52 QAAM x4 UGB x10 NPB x8

 **J35J Draken (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2124 km/h

An intercept aircraft capable of short take-off and landing (STOL). Its characteristic double delta wing design allows for low air resistance and high maneuverability at low speeds.

MSSL x50 SAAM x8 UGB x8 RCL x8

 **F-1 (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 1700 km/h

A variant of a training aircraft, this attack aircraft was developed as an air-to-ground and air-to-ship fighter. Its outdated design lags behind that of current fighter technology, but the compact and well refined design has earned it the trust of pilots and mechanics alike.

MSSL x56 RCL x10 UGB x12 LASM x10

 **MiG-21bis Fishbed (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2229 km/h

A small, single-engine fighter, codenamed "Fishbed." While its electronics and weapons capability are outdated, it makes up for it with high maneuverability and low cost.

MSSL x56 RCL x8 UGB x10 QAAM x6

 **F-4E Phantom II (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2370 km/h

A large fighter aircraft known as the "Phantom II." Although its design is outdated, its massive payload and superior range make it effective in both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

MSSL x62 SAAM x6 UGBL x8 NPB x10

 **MiG-29A Fulcrum (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2446 km/h

This fighter was developed with the goal of overpowering the enemy in one-on-one combat. The "Fulcrum" boasts powerful engines and refined aerodynamics for superb maneuverability.

MSSL x60 SAAM x12 RCL x10 XAGM x12

 **F-20A Tigershark (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2150 km/h

Known as the "Tigershark," this aircraft is the successor to the F-5E. Its single-engine design provides a 60% increase in thrust.

MSSL x60 SAAM x10 GPB x8 XAGM x12

 **F-16C Fighting Falcon (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2173 km/h

Also known as the "Fighting Falcon." Small and lightweight, this aircraft is a well-balanced fighting machine for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

MSSL x60 XMAA x12 LAGM x8 UGBL x14

 **F/A-18C Hornet (MULTIROLE)**

Max speed: 1915 km/h

Due to the limited number of planes an aircraft carrier can hold, the carrier-based "Hornet" was designed as a multirole aircraft to handle both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.

MSSL x64 LASM x10 SAAM x8 SOD x12

 **A-10A Thunderbolt II (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 706 km/h

Also called the "Warthog," this ground attack fighter is equipped with tough armor to withstand enemy fire and a large Gatling gun. It is highly mobile at low speeds and is well equipped for its role in suppressing enemy ground forces.

MSSL x64 XAGM x18 FAEB x10 RCL x16

 **MiG-31 Foxhound (FIGHTER)**

Max speed:3000 km/h

This aircraft was developed to intercept enemy aircraft at high speeds. Codenamed "Foxhound," its wing structure has been reinforced in order to withstand supersonic speeds at low altitudes. It is best suited for high-speed one pass attacks.

MSSL x70 XLAA x12QAAM x10 UGBL x12

 **Mirage 2000D (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 2336 km/h

Appropriately named "Mirage," this aircraft was developed for low altitude intrusion. Digital control of its large delta wing gives this fighter superb acceleration and immediate response during maneuvers.

MSSL x64 UGB x14 GPB x10 XAGM x14

 **EA-6B Prowler (JAMMER)**

Max speed: 1050 km/h

This electronic warfare aircraft known as the "Prowler," not only provides active radar jamming to protect its allies from enemy fire but is also a formidable air-to-ground fighter.

MSSL x66 ECMP x5 LAGM x8 QAAM x4

 **Su-27 Flanker (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2500 km/h

Codenamed "Flanker," this aircraft is at the pinnacle of modern air superiority fighter technology. Its refined aerodynamics and powerful engines provide exceptional maneuverability.

MSSL x72 XMAA x16 UGBL x8 SFFS x12

 **F-15C Eagle (FIGHTER)**

Max speed:3017 km/h

Nicknamed the "Eagle," this air superiority fighter boasts top-class maneuverability and superior payload capacity, as well as outstanding mission survivability.

MSSL x70 XMAA x16 UGBL x10 QAAM x14

 **X-29A (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 1820 km/h

The forward-swept wings of this aircraft allow for exceptional turning ability. An advanced fly-by-wire system is employed to overcome instabilities inherent in this design.

MSSL x60 QAAM x10 FAEB x4 LAGM x10

 **F-14D Super Tomcat (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2485 km/h

This carrier-based F-14 features upgrades in radar and weapon control systems. Aptly called the "Super Tomcat," the F-14D can handle multiple enemies at once.

MSSL x72 XLAA x14 GPB x10 NPB x14

 **Gripen C (MULTIROLE)**

Max speed: 2152 km/h

Named after the griffon of legend, this aircraft boasts low cost and high maintainability. "Fighter," "attacker," or "recon," this fighter performs all of these roles equally well. It is known for its mission adaptability and high efficiency in battle.

MSSL x60 RCL x12 XLAA x8 SOD x14

 **F-16XL (ATTACKER)**

Max speed:2253 km/h

This modified F-16 features a double delta wing for better acceleration and maneuverability at low speeds. Its increased wing area allows for greater weapons payload, ideal for ground attacks.

MSSL x68 XAGM x14 SAAM x10 BDSP x8

 **Tornado GR.4 (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 2417 km/h

Called the "Tornado," this aircraft is capable of both high-speed low-level infiltration, and short take-off and landing (STOL). These features provide overall improvements in survivability, maneuverability, and striking capability.

MSSL x72 BDSP x12 ECMP x4 LASM x12

 **F-2A (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 2300 km/h

An F-16 variant developed through an international collaboration. While its design is optimized for air-to-ground and air-to-ship combat, the F-2A is also an effective air superiority fighter.

MSSL x72 LASM x12 XMAA x20 SFFS x14

 **F-15E Strike Eagle (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 3017 km/h

Known as the "Strike Eagle," this F-15 adds ground attack capabilities to its full-scale aerial combat abilities. The outward design of this fighter appears similar to that of the F-15, but has in fact undergone extensive modification.

MSSL 76 SFFS x14 SAAM x10 GPB x14

 **F-117A Nighthawk (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 993 km/h

Nicknamed the "Nighthawk," this stealth aircraft represents the latest technology. However, its stealth capabilities come at the cost of maneuverability and weapons load.

MSSL x54 GPB x16 LAGM x12 QAAM x8

 **F-35C (MULTIROLE)**

Max speed: 1960 km/h

This versatile and lightweight carrier-based stealth fighter features both air-to-air and air-to-ground attack capabilities while maintaining a low production cost.

MSSL x76 LASM x14 SOD x16 QAAM x10

 **EA-18G (JAMMER)**

Max speed: 1900 km/h

This carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft is a modified version of the F/A-18C. Its primary role is to minimize threat to itself and the squadron by jamming enemy radar. It is often employed when an enemy offensive is apparent.

MSSL x74 ECMP x6 XMAA x8 LAGM x10

 **Rafale M (MULTIROLE)**

Max speed: 2130 km/h

A multirole, carrier-based aircraft characterized by its delta wing and canards. A well-balanced plane that can handle a wide range of missions. Its name roughly translates as "Squall."

MSSL x74 LASM x14 XMAA x16 SOD x14

 **Typhoon (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2495 km/h

An air superiority fighter developed by an international collaboration. Computer-controlled operation of its control surfaces give it exceptional agility at both supersonic and subsonic speeds.

MSSL x78 XLAA x14 SOD x16 SFFS x12

 **Su-34 Strike Flanker (ATTACKER)**

Max speed: 2200 km/h

A modified Su-27, called the "Strike Flanker." Specialized in long-range ground attack missions, this unique design includes a toilet and a simple kitchen behind the pilot's seat.

MSSL x80 XAGM x16 LAGM x14 XMAA x12

 **Su-33 Sea Flanker (MULTIROLE)**

Max speed: 2300 km/h

A modified Su-27, nicknamed ''Sea Flanker", created to fit the role of a multirole carrier-based aircraft for air-to-air, air-to-sea, and air-to-ground for cover landings, this fighter can be used in a variety of missions.

MSSL x70 XMAA x16 RCL x10 LASM x10

 **YF-23A Black Widow II (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2335 km/h

Nicknamed the "Black Widow II," this supersonic stealth fighter is known for its unique design, which achieves minimal air resistance and radar observability.

MSSL x80 QAAM x12 NPB x12 BDSP x10

 **F-15S/MTD (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2450 km/h

An experimental aircraft with thrust vectoring nozzles and canard wings, developed to research air combat maneuverability. It performed so well in tests that it was deployed for actual combat.

MSSL x80 FAEB x8 XLAA x14 SOD x16

 **Su-47 Berkut (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2500 km/h

The "Berkut" is characterized by the forward-swept wings that enable very sharp turns. Stability is maintained by electronically controlled canard wings, making this a preeminent fighter aircraft.

MSSL x82 SAAM x14 SFFS x16 BDSP x12

 **Su-37 Terminator (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2500 km/h

Known as the "Terminator," this variant of the Su-27 was developed as an all-weather multipurpose fighter. Cutting edge electronics and thrust vectoring nozzles give it unprecedented dogfighting capabilities.

MSSL x82 XLAA x16 FAEB x8 NPB x18

 **F/A-22A Raptor (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: 2410 km/h

A fighter with stealth capabilities and thrust vectoring nozzles for superior maneuverability. Designed to relieve much of the pilot's burden, the "Raptor" represents a new standard of air superiority.

MSSL 82 XMAA x18 GPB x12 SOD x12

 **ADFX-01 Morgan (FIGHTER)**

Max speed: unknown

Developed from an experimental aircraft of the South Belka National Weapons Plant, this all-weather multi-purpose aircraft's attack and defensive capabilities far exceed that of any other fighter.

MSSL x84 TLS x7 MPBM x2 ECMP x8

 **II) WEAPONS**

 **MSSL**

Tracking distance: 1400m

Standard missile who can track both target in the air and on the ground.

 **UGB**

Unguided Bomb. Impacts a small blast radius and less blast damage

 **UGBL**

Unguided Bomb (Large). Impacts a larger blast radius and high blast damage

 **NPB**

Napalm Bomb. Impacts on a small radius, straight line flame blast.

 **SFFS**

Self-Forging Fragmentation Submunitions Bomb. Dispenser drops sensor-fused bomblets. Bomblet coverage area is dependent on release altitude.

 **BDSP**

Bomblets Dispenser Bomb. Dispenser remains fixed to aircraft pylon and drops bomblets along flight path with medium blast damage

 **RCL**

Rocket Launcher. Impacts on a target as long as it stays in the RCL Reticule

 **HVR**

High Velocity Rocket. Unlike the RCL, this high-speed rocket has a greater range of action and blast radius, but this remove the capacity of using entire volleys due to its bigger size.

 **FAEB**

Fuel Air-Explosive Bomb or Thermobaric bomb.

Dispenses a cloud of aerosolized fuel in an airburst just above ground level prior to detonating it, causing a large blast radius and massive explosion damage

 **GPB**

Guided Penetration Bomb. Can be guided toward a precise target through laser designation pod when dropped from high. Its small blast radius made it perfect in case when avoiding material casualties are a need.

 **SOD**

Tracking distance: 5000m

Stand Off Disperser. This cruise missile dispersed in many small bombs shell during its flight, perfecto suites for destroying target in a straight line.

 **LASM**

Tracking distance: 5000m

Long-range Air-to-Surface Missile. This sea skimming missile fly low to the sea, avoiding most of the enemy naval defenses.

 **LAGM**

Tracking distance: 3000m

Long-range Air-to-Ground Missile. Anti-SAM version of the LASM in the AC world. Has larger blast radius than LASM, and fly in a straight line toward its target, making better suited than the LASM for attack against high altitude SAMs or radar sites.

 **XAGM**

Tracking distance: 1400m

Advanced Air-to-ground missile

This highly mobile missile flies toward its target before diving on it. Suitable for taking little groups of grounds vehicles hidden between buildings.

 **QAAM**

Tracking distance: 1400m

Quick Maneuver Air-to-Air Missile

This highly mobile missile is capable to lock on a target in the six hours of the fighter, and possess redundant locking capacities, making it harder to evade for the enemy craft.

 **SAAM**

Tracking distance: 4500m

Semi-active Air-to-Air Missile

High precision missile with great range but need to be laser guided and had lower mobility than standard missiles. Communications brevity code word "FOX 1" for launch of air-to-air semi-active radar-guided missile; semi-tracking capabilities and high-accuracy lock onto air targets

 **XLAA**

Tracking distance: 5000m

Advanced Long-range Air-to-Air Missile Locks onto up to four targets within a long range, but as limited mobility at short range. Communications brevity code word "FOX 3" for launch of air-to-air active radar-guided missile; fire-and-forget capability.

 **XMAA**

Tracking distance: 3000m

Advanced Medium-range Air-to-Air

Locks on to up to four targets within a medium range. Communications brevity code word "FOX 3" for launch of air-to-air active radar-guided missile; fire-and-forget capability

 **ECMP**

Electronic Countermeasures Pod.

Jam the enemy radar, making lock on longer in time and disrupting radar guided missiles tracking capacities. Useless against thermic guided or laser guided weaponry.

 **And this is the end.**

 **Yes, you will find that I did not include the Falken, as it was created in 2005. But i add the Su33. I did have some realism in it, especially for the laser guided munition and the ECMP, who in real word are useless against IR missiles, such as Flares are useless against electromagnetic locked missiles.**

 **I have just one thing to say, the description of the F-35 always made me laugh: "low production cost" they said... Maybe Lockheed Martins should take some advices from Axe and Hammers or some Belkan plane factories...**

 **As I said, this list is non exhaustive, and in the case if I publish a second book (yes, I know I should maybe think of publishing the first, I agree) I will made an updated version of it.**


	2. Prologue: An harsh meeting

Sometimes, people try to win wars. Often it ends in disasters. Because they do not see where war is fought. The true war has never been waged by fighters, battleships or soldiers. They are but crude matter, obstacles against which we tested ourselves. The true war is waged in the heart of all living beings, against our own nature, chaos or order, that is was shaped and bind this world together.

So, in order to truly win a war, the first battle we had to fight is against ourselves. This is why wars never end. They only change from one battlefield to another.

As the brown-haired thirty-five-year-old man was writing down those lines with a pencil in a simple book, a voice interrupted him in his thoughts, causing him to look up at the thirty-five-years-old dark-haired Yukte mercenary.

"Hey, Pixy what are you writing? Philosophical thoughts on war, again?" He asked.

" A bit. About our future and our past, on what we could become if man's nature was different."

" My former philosophic teacher, a good coworker of mine, would have said: that's a great beginning for a dissertation. And after he would have added with a happy voice: YOU HAVE FOUR HOURS, STUDENTS!"

" Oh, come on, don't go into your old teacher mood, Herr Thesermeister,'' Larry Foulke argued against the former physic teacher at the university of Octabursk.

The man who was talking with Pixy, which had the strange nickname of "Thesermeister", for master of thesis had a quite strange story. At the beginning of his thirties, this man, Valentin Kovsky, was a brilliant physic teacher in this far away city. Even if he liked his current job at that time, it was not his dreamed one: like many young people, he tried to become a fighter pilot of the glorious Yuktobanian air force. But he was diagnosed with very light hyperopia, and it was enough to send him from the book of flight academy to the ones of applied thermodynamics. He could have stayed teacher a long time, but life is rarely a long and calm river: his older brother Alekseï was forced to leave the army in 1992, due to some covered events in a country at the border of Yuktobania. He was not the only one though: an entire squadron of pilots strangely suffering from PTSD had been given to Belka in total mystery. And this is when his new life truly started: a fellow medicine scientist reported to Valentin of a new laser technique to treat hyperopia, removing what was preventing him from realizing his dream. But the army didn't want him anymore, even with full eyesight. So with his brother, a former navy pilot, they stole two Sukhoi 33s and fled out of Yuktobania, becoming two mercenaries under the name of Komyeta squadron.

" Eh, do not bother my brother, Solo wing. He may not have your skills but his Su33 had never lost a wing in battle though.'' Alekseï argued, pointing the fundamental difference between Larry and his older brother : while the Belkan had a very aggressive flight style, the Yukte had kept from his day as a physic teacher a very analytic approach of everything, seeing equations and physical relations when others were just seeing a life-or-death situation.

And obviously, the loud arguing of one proud Belkan and two Yuktes had to attract the attention of every other pilots in the underground resting room, which was the eating room as well. Many of the buildings of Valais air base had many underground levels, in order to withstand little bombardment from fighters, but this little concrete armor was nothing for the Belkan refitted BM-335Ns Lindwurm, n for neue, new in Belkan. The attracted pilots were not that numerous though: only 4. In total, there were maybe more cooks in this room than pilots in fighting state.

" And it's all that remains of halo squad." Pixy reminded himself, the events of the fall of Directus not very buried into the depth of his mind yet. At Directus, the fifteenth of March 1995, the halo squad was the tallest of Ustian history: ten F-15Cs, ten F-15Es and ten F-14Ds, and only one of each eagle and two Tomcats survived the engagement. But him, he lost more than one half of his wing. If he had just lost that he wouldn't be the bad moody pilot of this last line of defense that the Belkan nicknamed "nutzloses Landebahn" for useless runway, as it was iced almost the entire year, turning every landing into a highly risked figure of ice skating. He had lost his half, his true half, and nothing could change this fact. Not the laugh of the twin witches, nor the Ustian jokes of the two other pilots.

"- Pixy, if this war end someday, you could write philosophical books. Some essays, but remember, there's no try up there, my young padawan."

This was one of the typical translated jokes of Francis Delaire, a blond-haired and grey-eyed Ustian pilots of the new generation. The Belkan they fought made fun of their names, telling them to "- laissez moi de l'air" (leave us some space) and so they ended up beating the Belkan on jokes. He and his twin brother Frédéric were truly hard to distinct, and only a small scar on his right cheek could help. Thus, with their helmet and masks it was impossible to try to differ the twins. They were piloting a F15C and a F15E respectively but were both good in air-to-air and air-to-ground, despite the technical difference between Fred's Eagle and Francis' Strike Eagle.

Both were from the new generation of pilots, the ones that were not former Belkans who left like Pixy did years before. But if Pixy was no more of a laughing guy since his losses, the twin witches, as they were called during flight time, laugh in unison.

" That was a funny one, don't you think Morgana?" The female pilot with the tac code Viviane asked. She was a young lady in her early twenties, with blond hair dressed in a ponytail.

" Well apparently Larry did not find it hi larry ous, i'm disappointed by his Belkan lack of humor.'' The Ustian female pilot responded, making fun of Pixy's first name, a joke the two girls like to do often. The face of the young blond girl was supplemented by a little unconventional blue lock at the left of his forehead, while the rest of her hair was combed in a left streak.

" I am maybe humorlos (without humor in Belkan), but at least I don't have a last name so laughable it seems your parents attempted laughing school and got the top marks. Recht, Ingertrude and Frédégonde ?" He finished his dismantling of their joke, restraining himself not to laugh because of the strange first name pronunciation, added to his Belkan accent.

The results of this strange combination weren't slow to come, and soon all burst out laughing, even the waiters and cooks who were in their cleaning duties after the lunch. All seems happy. All? No, there were two girls who were getting a little red on the cheek, signaling their embarrassment. They were ready to burst but from something vastly opposed to laugh : anger.

" What are those name coming from?" Alekseï wondered, trying to pronounce them with his Yuktobanian accent, but it only ended in more laugh.

" I think they are coming from the third dynasty of the archaic period." His brother replied with a solemn and serious voice, trying to mimic a historian studying antediluvian times.

" This is why we ask to be called by our TAC names." Viviane insisted, his ponytail almost undone by her sole anger, while she slammed her fist on the wood table, shaking the glasses and the steel-made jug of water. But there were no risks of breaking them, since they were all in steel or in hard glass that reduced the shattering in case of bombardment.

" Well we can forgive the Yuktes, they did not know. But this is treason, Solo wing." Morgana said as she punched Pixy's shoulder, causing him to let escape a little laughter, not very hurt by this friendly attack.

While the pilot were having fun in their restroom, their superiors could not afford such luxury, trying to obtain the more data they could on the current situation of the western front, which was currently stopped by Osea above the Great Lakes area, with most of the fight concentrated in the local major city of Wesson. Osea intended to keep Wesson at all cost, and had assembled a great fluvial fleet there, without taking in count the dozens of SAMs, TripleA's and Flaks cannon gathered in the area. And all of this was nothing compare to the heart of the defense network, which was the only thing that kept the western front stable. A state-of-the-art energy-based interception system which said system should ''send the CIWS and its Belkan counterparts back to the age of spears and arrows'' according to Osean scientists. But today, the thirstiest of mars 1995, at 14:30 hour, Belka had once more proven its strategic, aerial and technological superiority by reducing the system to dust. As they left the communication tower and head toward the restroom with the data on this sad event, Wesson was falling under Belka's unrivaled wrath, and there the Osean numerical advantage had failed too. The younger of the two men, a blond-haired in its thirties, former Belkan intelligence officer who deflect to Ustio for political reasons, was the first to speak as they went to the pilot's restroom.

" I am beginning to fear for the security of our exiled officials here. If Wesson has fallen, when it was judged impregnable, what are our chances here?"

" A good question it is, lieutenant Philip Johnson. But i think chance is not a variable within this model that our survival is, as Komyeta 1 would say.'' The more aged superior in his fifties with many of his remaining hairs turned gray replied, trying to make some fun of the situation.

" Richtig. That's definitely what Herr Thesermeister would say. I'm looking forward to see what kind of crazy physical theory he will get out of his brain when he will see the new unknown Belkan plane." Johnson added, pointing one of the harddrive he was carrying.

" Chaos or quantum theory, i presume." His admiral ended, opening the secure door that gave access to the building where his last pilots were resting, and began getting down the stair before the restroom, from which he had an open view of the underground room. The pilots were talking freely and laughing sometimes, quoting funny anecdotes from their lives or battles. Koenig would have wanted not to interrupt this moment of happiness, but as mister philo - the last given nickname to Pixy - would have quoted ''there's no mercy in war. It's a coalition of power.''

" Sorry to interrupt your little common humor show, but i have bad news. Wesson has fallen, and we have some new data to share with all pilots in the briefing room."

Even without a clear order, the laughter ceased, all pilots stood up from their chairs and put them under the table. And all were already mentally preparing for the incoming briefing, who could be their ultimate one, or at least their penultimate.

 **Briefing room, Valais Air Base, Ustio, 31/03/1995, 14:35, weather: risk of snow**

The briefing room was just a little rectangular room at the basement of the control tower. This placement allowed that all available data from the antennas and radars of said control tower was redirected to the briefing room in no time. While he looked at the seven pilots, two womens and five mens, from very diverse origins, he thought a little about his past career, when he was the respected admiral Wilhelm Koenig of the Belka's six air unit. But the old leader refused the new far-right government that took power within Belka in 1993 and was forced to flee with his wife and son aboard the AWACS commanded by the intelligence officer Johnson. Then he became the leader of Ustio sixth aerial unit, which after the initial losses began recruiting mercenaries.

"- Get some rest, people." He greeted them as the screen was showing the twin yellow mountains logo of Axe and Hammer, the Ustian weapon supplier. They had lost the control of their factories in Directus, Solis Ortus and Aarlon, reducing greatly the weaponry available to the mercenaries and the other soldiers.

Then the video projector showed a map of the Osean continent, centered on Belka. The intelligence officer then zoomed in on the city of Wesson, while showing footage of a burning harbor and ships being set ablaze in the high corner of the screen. But this was not the true reason of this meeting. Something worse had been revealed by Belka, something more than tactical superiority.

" So, as the Belkan propaganda claimed at fourteen hours, Wesson has fallen…" He was about to explain the reason of this quick fall when Pixy cut him.

" Sorry to interrupt you, admiral, but weren't the Osean's Death Stars protecting this city?"

" Huh, what are we talking about?" Viviane asked, not being aware of this secret Osean defense system and its funny nickname.

" The Osean army refitted sixteen B-52 Stratofortress with high tech laser, giving them the ability to shot almost every incoming Belkan planes or missiles.'' Koenig explained while pictures of the said bomber were displayed, shooting a full barrage of cruise missiles within seconds.

" So, what happened? Did a farmer take them down with some proton torpedoes right in their exhaust port?"

" No, captain Francis, Belka has not yet developed X-wing." The admiral rolled his eyes at the humorist of the base. Just after he become serious again and said with a little fear in his voice. " But they just created something that could rival this sci-fi fighter."

Next picture was a pair of aircraft with strange forward swept wings and canards, with two big engines separated by a little space that allow its pilots to have a good backside view. Their paintjob was not meant at all to be stealthy, as they were painted in a golden paintjob on the top and dark gold below the wings. They were escorted by other forward swept-wing aircraft, which were not unknown to all pilots: Sukhoi 47 Berkuts, lethal in dogfight due to its incredible maneuverability but quite weak in air-to-ground. The video was short, as the aircraft that took it was shot down by a powerful fifty caliber cannon mounted on those unknowns. But Pixy and all pilots in the room had already recognized the golden insignia representing a sphinx holding a spear on top of some old sarcophagus with two red and black ellipses on the rock, just at the top of the word "Gault". With no doubt all had recognized the sign of the elite squadron of the eighteenth air division, fifth air unit of Belka, Kupchenko's famous squadron for the almost perfect coordination of their eight Sukhoi 47s.

" Kupchenko scientists' have created this new prototype as a test weapon platform, but he made them turn into those two deadly fighters. Apparently their strategy was simple: use a massive barrage of long range smoke shells to create a cover for those two unknowns while the Gault squadron attacked them with their semi-actives missiles, out of effective range of the laser due to their smaller target profile."

The projector displayed said situation, with the two unknowns piercing through the heavy cloud of artificial smoke. One second after four heavy missiles who looked more like anti-carrier missiles or cruise missiles were shot by each golden unknown. The B-52s tried to intercept them with their lasers, but the missiles flew in erratic patterns, avoiding the deadly lasers. And five seconds later their thermobaric ordnance blew up in the middle of the Osean squadron. The Stratofortresses that were not destroyed by the initial shock were obliterated by the secondary explosion. From the sixteen heavy bombers remained only a big cloud of tiny pieces of metal floating in the air.

" What type of ordnance is that?" Alekseï screamed in surprise, who in his day in the Yuktobanian Navy had already seen big explosions, but they were irrelevant compared to this Armageddon the Belkan created.

" Well the Osean are investigating on it, they don't know even the type of the plane, so knowing its weaponry will take some type." The admiral answered honestly, knowing that even in wartime Osean bureaucracy was a pain in the ass.

" So, we are all screwed up if they come here, even if Osea dispatches us reinforcements that will never come.'' Pixy said with a dark cynic voice.

"- That's the spirit. But someone had called us yesterday from Erusea, and it's the second raison for this briefing."

The rooms remains silent for a few minutes, with the only source of noise being the projector and the lead pencil of Valentin Kovsky scratching on a little draft book, writing formulas on the paper, strange mixture of figures, old letters and mathematical symbol that he was maybe the only in the room to understand. As he was the only one that was doing something, it attracted the attention of Francis, who left his chair to have a look at the incomprehensible formulae that were spreading on the paper.

" What it this? Old archaic Verusean?" He tried to describe his astonishment in front of the strange series of calculations.

" No, just quantity of momentum diffusion, that's elementary particle physics." The Yukte former teacher replied, being currently blocked on a streak of nonlinear equations.

" What's the point of all of this nonsense abstract physic for us? I don't think even your brother understand you right now." Pixy asked, not knowing where all of those formulae could lead them.

" Figuring the ordnance of those unknowns… It's not octogen, it did not match the radius..." The Yukte said to himself, as the missile has not a very big warhead for the massive blast it produced.

" Well speaking of radius, the Osean scientist thought having figured that it had to be some nuclear warhead, but there was no radiation after the fire." Johnson added to the mixt the few data the Osean send them about these tragic losses.

" I don't think it's a nuclear bomb, clean or dirty. Kupchenko is maybe a crazy proud Belkan but he surely knows that nuclear powered missiles are not very effective in air-to-air." Pixy said, shrugging as he was talking about a theory that seemed to be truly too crazy -even for him- this time.

" Yeah, and it did not match with the little strange flash between the primary and the secondary detonation." Koenig noticed, having seen the tape so many times today he knew every second of it.

This word, ''flash'' cause Valentin to enter a state of perplexity, pointing his greyish eyes at the roof while thinking, trying to finally figure the origin of the flash, that seems to be like some kind of pulse.

" I did think my entire life this molecule to be nothing but schematics. So Kupchenko's scientists did not just create this beast of an aircraft, they did manage to synthetize hypersthene." The Yukte dropped, like if his scientific expectancies were all destroyed by this single fact.

" Well at least it has a better name than me." Ingertrude said, who never like her name in her whole life and want nothing but to be called by her TAC name Viviane.

" Nice name, but what does it teach us about those unknowns' ordnance?" Koenig brought back the conversation to a more serious level.

" Well as I stated it was just a theoretical molecule until know. But it's a quite stable explosive matter, the only thing that can detonate it is an electric pulse at a very precise frequency."

" So, if I follow this crazy mind of you, brother, we could remotely detonate it with EMPs?" Alekseï tried to sum up the data on the not any more mysterious ordnance.

" Well it's good news. I will transmit this to our exiled engineers in the bunker three, maybe they can create some countermeasures to this new threat." Koenig concluded, and was about to end the briefing when out of nowhere came a message from the control tower.

" Control tower to briefing room, we have a call for the admiral from an unknown who claimed to be an Erusean friend of yours. Should I put him in line?" The radio operator of the base asked politely. He was an old sixty-years-old Ustian named Henri Blaise who was just the president of the local radio-telegraphist society, and was engaged at this post due to his certain knowledge of this field (and also the fact that the former operator was killed in the control tower of the Directus Air Base).

" We have almost finished the debriefing of today's news so kein (no) problem." Koenig accepted the call, using without realizing it a Belkan word, but it was hard for many Belkan not to insert their vocab into a conversation.

The map of the Great Lakes was replaced by another layout, that depicted a man at the same age than Koenig, yet with a bit more wrinkles. There was also a great difference in uniform between the two mens: while Koenig kept his old grey green uniform, just changing the insignia, the other totally hid his Belkan origin behind a naval blue uniform, but of simple first lieutenant.

" Hi Koenig, how are you? And Hello to all the others that are crazy enough to follow this man" The Erusean instructor asked with a friendly tone, waving to the pilots behind Koenig, who was standing in front of the computer cam.

" Gut Maxi. It seems you have some news for me."

" Well i hope you remember our old rafting spot in Fato, you know the one who began just after this polygonal-shaped old fortress." The so-called Maxi said, like he was trying to make pass a coded message that just him and Koenig could understand.

" It's sad that's now this site has another use, but the forest before is still beautiful as always, with a little river not that sinuous." Koenig said, knowing what the Fatoan did to this three-hundred-year-old fortress, violating the memory of those who fight there in order to maintain peace and security back then.

" I know one person who's gonna do some rafting in a few dozens of minutes, it would be a shame not to send some of those young ones I see behind you to participate there."

" Of course, my dear, the more the merrier. See you soon, old Pal." Koenig waved at the Erusean while the conversation stopped leaving the pilots a little reluctant about the next thing that would happen.

The first one to react was Herr Thesermeister, who has almost the whole thing figured out, as this Fatoan fortress was not fully unknown to him.

" So does all of this mean we are going to break Fatoan air sovereignty to save a new recruit?" Valentin exposed his analysis, ready to leave his chair to get to his plane in no time.

" Always right in your analysis Thesermeister. All pilots, you're going to Fato right now. Briefing about the current situation will be in route." Koenig agreed with the Yukte, knowing that with the Belkan still occupied on the western front they had little to no chance to know for the Ustian op and send here an attack squadron before their own squadron came back.

" And what about the ammo and fuel? Morgana asked, already standing in the direction of the exit door.

" Since we are on Schlarachniveau of alert at all time your planes are always ready to go in your respective hangars." Johnson replied, clearing the situation while tapping in the Axe and Hammer software to figure the optimal way.

" What does this Schlarlachniveau even mean?" Alekseï asked while running on the runway to his airplane, not understanding the almost transparent Belkan word.

" Crimson level of alert, Alekseï. The maximal one." Pixy traduced on their way to their hangars

 **Valais Air base, 31/03/1995, 15:00, Weather: risk of snow**

The seven aircraft were already in the air. Being on the verge of constant annihilation meant that all pilots, mercs and Ustians, could be sent in the air at any time of the day or of the night. From the canopy of his F-15C with black and red wings and the Galm demonic beast kind of insignia Pixy looked at the strange mixture of airplanes that comprise the Ustian six air unit. At that moment, they were the only ones left to fight against the proud Belkans for the survival of Ustio, with some old SA342 Gazelles and a few AA guns to defend the base.

" Valais air base to all aircraft, flight restriction cancelled, continue your flight path toward Gebet and Recta." The operator announced, before another voice replaced him to do the in-flight briefing.

" It looks like everyone is in the air. So, I'll do the briefing now. Look at your map, we will send some data." Koenig said, not knowing if this mission would end in victory or total failure, if the Belkans attacked during flight time.

" Galm 2 here, I'm good." Pixy acknowledged, leveling his aircraft with the two other Eagles. Francis one's had a greyish military camo with blue flaps, while his brother had the same camo but with the flaps in brown. They were already the same in the ground, and it was maybe even more difficult to distinct them in the sky. Both at the roundels from the Ustian air force and their halo squadron, a simple hawk catching a duck in flight in a blue ring, with Fred being the number 5 and Francis the number 7.

" This is Morgana, ready to kick some Belkan asses!" The young Ustian female pilot added. She was in a F-14D with a snowy camo, consisting of white dots on a navy dark blue, dots who were also the mark of the repaired holes from previous missions.

" I don't think Pixy will appreciate this, Morgana." Viviane had a bit of fun, in her Super Tomcat who had the same paintjob, and like the two others Ustian pilots had the Halo and Ustian roundels, with Morgana being the 12 and Viviane the 10. Even if they were now only four survivors of this squadron, they kept their numbers, honoring the fallen members over Directus.

" Could we concentrate a little on the briefing? Or I will give you three nonlinear equations to solve before tomorrow!" Valentin threatened with a friendly tone, knowing that no one like those equations here with him being the exception. His plane and his brother's were Sukhoi 33s with black wings, dark blue fuselage, white flaps and with little white and light blue comets on their wings, creating a very distinctive paint job from the other Ustian planes.

This unreal threat was followed by ten seconds of silence, that Kœnig broke to pursue his briefing.

" Well it seems that this threat works, as nobody's talking now. I will remember it if I have to threaten someone. So, the mission is simple: to escort back to base an Erusean pilot who had to leave for some unclear familial reasons, as my contact said. In order to escort this new mercenary, you had to meet him over an old polygonal-shaped fortress at the end of the national natural parc forest of Fato, close to the beginning of the Vardin ravine. It's more likely he will fly in the ravine to stay out of range of their radars. And you will have to fly low, close to a river that go from one point of this forest to the fortress too, in order not to alert the Fatoans.'' The admiral began his briefing and was about to describe the aerial and ground forces of the zone when Viviane intervened.

" Wait, admiral, isn't the Fatoan Federation neutral in this war?" Halo 12 asked, knowing that Fato was not in war with or against Belka, so she thought they would not have to fight today.

" Well I think we have to explain the concept of aggressive neutrality to Frédégonde, right?" Pixy asked, knowing well that this would trigger some reaction from the young lady.

" Repeat my true name one more time and I will show you how aggressive I can be!" Morgana yelled, augmenting her plane thrust to be at the same level than Pixy and to do five second later a doigt d'honneur to him.

" Easy there, young lady, to your anger give in not you must.'' Fred said, hoping to ease a little the already tense situation.

" So as Pixy stated, Fato applies the concept of aggressive neutrality. But there are more likely under Belka's leash who destroyed half of their air force in a fierce attack. Since this battle just after Directus's fall, the Belkans gave them new anti-air defense systems, but only to forbid any allied aircraft to go around Belka to attack the northern industrial heart of our opponents." Johnson explained, showing on their briefing screen the new Belkan anti-air system.

The picture was simple: a big armored truck, which said roof of its rear portion looking like the vertical launching system of an aegis. But the bays were way bigger, a bit like a truck designed for housing close range ballistic missile.

" So, what is the matter with those advanced SAMs?" Alekseï asked, betting that maybe the Belkans added some hypersthene to this defense system. " Thermobaric ordnance like the ones they have used over Wesson?"

" Well, say hello to BAWS." The admiral said, naming the system by its Belkan designation. " For Ballistische Abwehrraketensystem (ballistic system of defense). Every missile is fired to almost supersonic speed and separate later in a small barrage of high-speed air-to-air missile during its reentry phase. Once it falls from the sky, you will have only a few seconds to avoid them."

The description of the terminal velocity of those missiles was astonishing: almost Mach 4. And they were coming from an altitude of twenty kilometers, so they had plenty of time to lock on any fighter within the range of their tracking system. But hopefully all defenses have weaknesses: the only thing they could pull out against this threat were fast turns at low altitude, which thanks to the missiles' very great inertia will cause them to hit the ground.

" And don't forget they will be also arrays of SAMs, Flaks, TripleA's and maybe some jammers and the Belkan equivalent of phalanx close range gun: SPK for SuperPhönixKanon, capable of intercepting even entire volley of rockets if they are in great number." Johnson concluded the presentation of the fortress high tech Belkan defense system.

" So, to make things clear we are doomed? Or does the mercenary coming have some, I don't know, thermobaric ordnance to wipe everything out?" Fred pointed out, not very happy with the status of the ground forces not at their advantage.

" I don't even know what aircraft this merc is flying in, but my contact said it's some kind of prototype so we can hope it will bring some punch in the battlefield." Koenig clarified, trying to reassure those seven pilots heading for an uncertain fate.

 **Fortress of Bayes, Federation of Fato, 31/03/1995, 15:30, Weather: cloudy, risk of rain**

The seven aircrafts were approaching at very low altitude, gluing to the small river that became ten kilometers later the long Vardin ravine. They still have nine kilometers to the fortress, and no pilot was in good mood. Five minute later, at five kilometers, the message they feared to hear on enemy coms finally came:

" Aquilus 1 of the Fatoan Air Guard to Ustian planes, turn around, leave the area and we will not fire." A Fatoan pilot ordered from a F-16C with a light grey on its wing surrounded by a line of white, along with a yellow nose, making the plane look like a true eagle.

" We are just rendezvousing with a merc, you could just let him pass and no one is injured." Herr Thesermeister tried to negotiate, even if the Fatoan were known to be quite headstrong people.

" Just go back in your little skiing station and wait to be annihilate by our new Belkan friends."

" Bayes Fortress is online. Launching BAWS now!" The base commander announced with a sick joy, as the ballistic missiles were fired.

The missile bays were not any more on trucks, but around the fortress central portion, in four massive rectangular bays. The fortress had an octagonal star shape, surrounded by foothills, which had a boomerang kind of shape. On each part of the star there was a line of two SAMs and two TripleA's, flanked by flaks. The foothills had an armament of two SAMs and two SPKs, creating an almost impenetrable fortress. After the fortress there was a little canal who was allowing boats to bypass the obstacle that was the Vardin ravine. Canal that was also flanked by two groups of SAMs and a pair of AH-64s which were patrolling over the area.

" That's one hell of a fortress.'' Pixy described, after he tried to attack a foothill but was forced to withdraw due to the massive amount of AA fire.

Everyone tried to attack, but it was no use in trying to bomb it from high: the SPKs were destroying everything they launched. Even a full barrage of rockets from the two Sukhoi 33s did not harm it. Only one SAM was disabled, whilst the two Sukhois took some bullets. And to make things worse, the quick high-velocity missiles launched by the BAWS were raining like hell on them, forcing them to do constant evasive maneuvers, hunted by the F-16Cs and F/A-18Cs of the Fatoan air guard.

The only advancement made was the destruction of the SAMs surrounding the canal by the F-15E's SFFS's, who also destroyed the chopper with the massive amount of shrapnels produced. However, Fred took some bullets while turning the back of his plane to the fortress. But while flying a little above the canal, and therefore over the ravine, he saw some blimps on his radar. An unknown fighter was fighting others in a small portion of the ravine, which said portion looked like some kind of crater where the unknown was encircled by six Sukhoi 27s. He also saw while living the area after avoiding two missiles in a hairpin bend that two of them had been quickly shot down. " This unknown had to be a good mercenary, to get two high-tier aircrafts that fast." He analyzed.

" Halo 7 to base, I've located the mercenary, fighting Flankers in the ravine. At the pace he's destroying them he should join us in no time."

" Komyeta 1 to Halo 7, I agree with you, just saw one Flanker in flames flying out of the ravine before exploding."

" Good. Keep with the evasive maneuvers, maybe he'll be able to reduce the ground threat." Koenig ordered, trying to spare his forces. There was no point in getting a new mercenary through the sacrifices of other pilots.

 **Blayes Fortress, Federation of Fato, 31/03/1995, 15:45, Weather: cloudy, risk of rain.**

The seven pilots were beginning to feel exhausted from all those evasive maneuvers they had to pull out, having almost zero opportunities to return fire. Valentin Sukhoi 33's headed to the ravine, trying to confirm if the unknown foe of the Fatoan fighters was still alive. He did not see any Sukhoi 27s, just a blimp that only forward swept-wing aircraft produced. But that was not a Berkut at all. Maybe the "prototype" Koenig talked about. But while doing this, he flew a little above the ravine, which was covered by SAMs on the top of it. He heard the alarm blaring while he rushed out of the area, but the sound ceased way too early. He should have seen the red "missile incoming" alert on his HUD (head up display). But no. The two SAMs that had locked onto him had been destroyed by missiles coming from the ravine. And a second pair of SAMs that just showed up were destroyed right on the spot, by another pair of missiles coming from the bottom of the ravine, in the reversed way a XAGM would have flown.

" This is Komyeta 1 from the sixth air unit of Ustio to the unknown Erusean mercenary, thanks for the support, you can show yourself, we will escort you to Valais air base." Valentin said, his radar classing the Erusean as an unknown ally for the other Ustian pilots.

" Looks like your sixth air unit need more help than me right now. Just distract these stupid artillery servants while i come closer." The Erusean nodded with a cold, rude voice. The voice was so emotionless and unnaturally neutral that Valentin could not figure if it was a he or she-mercenary.

" Roger, pull you tricks guys and girls, our new ally needs a distraction." Koenig confirmed the order the Erusean just said.

" Where is this new one? And where's the Geier Squadron that was sent into the ravine?" The base commander asked to a radar officer, who was monitoring the entire area.

" Maybe still in the ravine. Or just about to go out of it." The operator reported, seeing nothing but the seven locked Ustian aircrafts that have managed until now to escape the deadly fire of the fortress, along its defensive squadron of eight Fighting Falcons and eight Hornets.

" I'm out of it now, you dummy! PC max!" The Erusean yelled, getting out of the sharped ravine at full speed, feeling smashed by the sudden acceleration, having flown at low speed in the ravine.

With the SAMs that were protecting the canal being destroyed, the forward swept-wing fighter went closer to the fortress quickly, flying just a few meters above the canal. The Erusean pilot could hear nothing but the " Pull up" alert, which was disconnected a second later, as it was hampering the focus of the mercenary. All the other mercenaries were amazed by the crazy rush of this one, going in the hell that the massive gunfire created.

" Shoot him down!" The commander bellowed to the AA servants, who were already busy enough intercepting two full volleys of rockets.

" The BAWS need some time to lock on. Too much for the current velocity of the attacking aircraft. And the external SAMs around the canal have been destroyed." One of the servants complained, trying to adjust his SPK to intercept the fighter, but with the full post combustion activated the turret could not follow the small profile fighter.

The mercenary had managed to cross the wall of fire, while taking some bullets in the composite wings, who have already lost some tiny parts and just arrive at the center of the fortress, between the four BAWS launcher. His finger was about to press the release mechanism of his two last FAEBs, but as a salvo of BAWS were fired, another idea came to the bloodthirsty mind of the pilot. A smile began to grow on the mercenary's lips at the terrific consequences it was going to cause. The prototype fighter tilted to the vertical while firing two missiles and two QAAMs on the ballistic missiles, which triggered an unexpected reaction for the fortress's servants.

" Hold on, their warheads were not locked on anything! They will strike indiscriminately!" A servant screamed, while the high velocity missiles had already begun their half loop toward the ground.

" Intercept them. We cannot sustain their firepower without losing too much of our own." The commander was forced to agree with his worried servants, who seemed to be a little less optimistic since the arrival of the new foe.

The said new foe followed a bit the trajectory of the missiles, going full vertical and without taking care of the increased risk of stalling in this situation, but the single engine aircraft was quickly hit on one of the injections system of the afterburners, and suddenly fall to the ground from less than one kilometer.

While the BAWS warheads were intercepted by the SPKs, the Ustian lost again a bit of the hope they gained seeing this new ally falling to a presumed certain death. All but Valentin, who was busy trying to figure if the fall of the airplane would give it enough speed, added to the potential thermobaric explosion of the two FAEB that the X-29A was still carrying.

" It seems our new ally need a little help from our threatened sixth unit, don't you think?" He rhetorically asked to the unknown pilot, almost knowing his answer.

" I'm just falling at Mach 0.8, nothing wrong. Any trick I could pull out?" The mercenary responded with a great quantity of sarcasm in his voice.

" Try to level up while dropping your ordnance. The momentum created should be enough to almost externally restart your engine." He gave a theoretical advice, hoping it would work.

The mercenary pressed the release device, and the two FAEBs fell toward the ground, preceding his aircraft which pilots tried his maximum to slow it down. But the fall of those two tiny objects was not unnoticed by the fortress' servants, who could only see the two bombs fall right over the BAWS bays.

" Intercept them! If they trigger any inner explosion we are doomed!" The commander shouted, seeing the two bombs getting closer by the seconds.

" We are trying, but those BAWS this Erusean made target us are keeping our SPKs busy!" A servant retorted, letting one of the BAWS's warheads destroy a SAMs to get a hit on the bombs. But it did not explode. It only triggered the fragmentation mechanism of the ordnance, spraying fuel all over the fortress while the Erusean had managed to bypass the anti-aircraft fire and leveled his aircraft, two second before the second bomb finally exploded.

The merc felt again a big rush forward, as the blast pushed the prototype for almost a half kilometer. Some parts already damaged were cut by the shock. But the effect expected by Herr Thesermeister happened: the formidable thrust caused the parts of the reactor stuck by the Fatoan bullets to move, restarting it.

" You were right. I am fly-worthy again, but fight-worthy no more." The pilot was happy for a second to survive, as all the over allied aircraft dived on the enemy fortress once the dust released by the explosion fell.

" Valais air base to Ustian sixth unit, finish this fortress and those Fatoan fighters, and then head back to Ustio." Koenig announced satisfied, hoping that no more Belkan surprise will infringe this operation.

" Galm 2, dropping all!"

" Halo 12, GPBs incoming!" Morgana said, followed by her wingmate in the other F-14D.

" Halo 5, I've got some iron headed gift for them!" Fred added, as the four bombs he had left fell right on the almost disabled fortress, destroying what was remaining of the BAWS bays. The final shots were two volleys of rockets launched by the Sukhoi 33s, which finally triggered an intern explosion, sending their rockets through the holes left by the BAWS. From the fierce fortress only remained the two-hundred-years-old-walls, but now empty from life.

" Halo 7 to Valais, I've taken some nasty hits. I will escort the Erusean back to base, it's better for my survival."

" Well my aircraft has more holes in it than a piece of your Ustian cheese, so for once i'm ok with letting some kills getting away." The Erusean agreed with the same neutral voice used at the beginning of the fight.

" Well, watch and learn, air tourist." Galm 2 said while turning to face four Fighting Falcons. He sent two QAAMs, then two missiles on one, before finishing the last head-on with his gun, and all with no injuries.

Then the Erusean looked to see the others pilots' fight style, after having put the stolen prototype on the way to the Valaisian Alps.

Fred, who just paired with Komyeta 2, went head on to a six F/A-18Cs formation. They evaded the SAAMs of their opponents doing scissors maneuvers before crossing each other path to flanked in a few seconds the six Fatoans. Then they both launched two missiles, each of them aimed at the cockpit of their opponents and gunned down the two remaining aircraft who vainly tried to outrun the Ustians, using their afterburners but it was too late.

On the other hand, while Pixy gunned quickly two MiG-31s who just arrived, having to prolong the fire of his gun due to the armor of the Foxhound, the "Twin Witches" were not that conventional. The new pilot thought for a time that the prototype's radar was failing to track them because of the bullets it took a few minutes ago, but they were just flying through a cumulonimbus. The one thing every instructor would tell not to do. And they went out a few seconds later five hundred meters higher, falling almost covered in ice on a group of four Hornets, firing their missiles on their foe's wings. Some of their opponents had their wings cut off by their Tomcats' fire. But unlike Solo wing, they did not manage to overcome their losses.

And finally, the Erusean had a look on Herr Thesermeister's strategy. He was not in fancy maneuvers at all. Just following his foes very close, taking advantage of his plane thrust like against his final opponent, a lonely F-16C. He forced the Fatoan to go higher, firing below the one-reactor aircraft. He knew his opponent technical weakness: a maximal incidence angle five degree below the one of his Sea Flanker. He saw the angle slowly increase, twenty, thirty then forced the F-16C to pull up, firing a straight missile one inch below the Falcon's belly. But while doing so, the Factoan aircraft entered a deadly stall. And he was not able to evade a pair of missiles three seconds later.

Even if reinforcements were arriving from other Fatoan bases, they had lost their fire support. " It's going to be ok" Halo 7 thought, as they crossed the Fatoan border, with their allies following them eighty kilometers further.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 31/03/1995, 16:00, Weather: clear, but risk of quick change.**

Francis was almost satisfied. Despite having taken some considerable damage, he was on the final way to Ustio. And the six others had downed another sixteen aircraft formation while they crossed the Factoan border, comprised of MiG-21s and F-5Es, which were no great challenge for the Ustian pilots.

But five second ago, he just saw three blimps on his radar. He knew it was not hundred percent responding, but he began to worry about the safety of the Erusean he was escorting and his. Trying to confirm this unknown threat, he asked the Erusean, hoping he would identify the threat.

" Hey, Erusean, I've got bogeys on my radars, but nothing clear. Can you confirm their IFF (identification Friend Foe)?"

" Negative, my radar is more a duraluminium sieve than anything right now. It's a chance I've just a little cut on the shoulder." The mercenary responded, trying to look in his back to see any threats, but with the constant cloud coverage over Valais it was no use. The pilot had quite some blood on his flight suit, but hopefully it was not his.

" Did you get seriously hurt?" Halo 7 inquired, worried to escort a wounded pilot. He had already seen his fair share of pilots crashing on the alignment of pylons bearing semi-automated AA defenses before the short runway of the base, some due to internal bleeding caused by shockwaves they thought that they managed to survive.

" Ich nicht, aber du wirst schon!" (me not, but you'll be soon) A female voice with a deep Belkan accent added while firing a pair of missiles from its internal bay, revealing for a moment her position.

Francis used his last flares and managed to overcome the tracking capacity while flying low to the mountain, but he knew this would not go the easy way. He had identified the aircraft as five YF-23s with a two-tone pale pink and grey camo with black ailerons. These pilots were known to never left a survivor in their engagement, even at the risk of their safety, but their almost ignorance of fear make them very deadly. Their emblem was a woman in armor, holding a spear, and plunging the said spear into a broken pair of rings.

" Witwemacher 5 to 1, we can destroy Valais Air Base right now and deal with those aircraft later." Another Belkan pilot argued while opening his bomb bay in the perspective of a future run.

" Nein, fünf. If we attack now those two planes will be able to lock on us. Zwei and drei, get this Strike Eagle, we are taking the Erusean plane."

" Roger." The squadron answered. The six intact aircraft were too far to catch them on time. Even if they catch them up, the Ustian would find nothing but wreckages and a destroyed base. They will not even make their way to Osea, it was too far. " The perfect situation" the leader laughed maniacally, seeing as her and two other YF-23s were converging on the forward swept-wing aircraft, on the verge of destruction. But she did not know how wrong she was.

" Hurry, if you force them to follow you, they will have our anti-air guns firing when you reach the base." Francis gave a desperate order, ready to sacrifice himself.

" Martyrs do not win wars, Halo 7. Nor runners or goners. Survivors do. Do not move a bit, i'll take care of the ones following you." The Erusean harshly responded, bringing a bit of hope to Halo 7 and the crews back in Valais, who were still silent on the waves.

" But you have no more radar and missiles! It's suicidal!" The Ustian did not wanted to have his life saved by another sacrifice.

" Do not move. I've got my guns, and my skills, ready to get some kills!" The Erusean retorted with a joyful voice, as the thrill of near-death experience was the only thing in which this pilot could find some pleasure, while evading a pair of QAAMs by mere inches, thanking for once that the very badly damaged wings of his fighter was giving his plane a smaller target profile.

Then the forward swept-wing fighter began to get some speed, this made Francis wondering what this mercenary was going to do. He thought for a second the Erusean was going to flee, but no. At the limit of craziness, the mercenary made a quick Himmelman, flying straight into the three Widows which scattered to evade collision with such a damaged fighter. However, when Francis saw the fighter going full head-on toward him, this worried him a bit. He did not understand what the strategy of this pilot from another continent was.

" Do. Not. Move." The Erusean bellowed, as his aircraft was at top speed, but without post combustion it was not very high.

Then the damaged plane executed a maneuver no one was expecting: tilting around the roll axis, it was now flying perpendicular to the horizon line. And it passed at top speed between the two ailerons of the F-15E, arriving right on the two attacking aircrafts. No one was expecting the Erusean to come as such an angle, and the number two fell, gunned down by a powerful twin gun. The number three had no time to turn around that he was already in the Erusean line of fire. He tried to flee but engaged the afterburners too late and was quickly gunned down. The two aircraft crashed on the mountain, causing a bit of fear in the heart of the number 4 and 5.

" That was unexpected. But efficient. I just freaked out when i see you flying through my ailerons." Halo 7 described, trying to calm his erratic breath.

" When in danger, always take the worst way." The Erusean smirked, this pilot loving too much the thrill of the near-death experience to play safe.

" Attack the base! I will take care of this Erusean future wreckage!" The leader blared, turning to engage the Erusean.

" Witwemacher 4 to leader, beginning bomb run." He indicated, feeling safer because the only aircraft who was fighting them would be busy for a long time if he survived.

But he forgot one thing: SAAMs did not take into account stealth if properly aimed and guided. And Francis had still two of his. Unfortunately, they saw the two missiles launched from the Strike Eagle too late. They could just destroy the automated guns on some metallic pillars before the runway. But while they were avoiding Halo 7's missiles, they did not climb enough to get off range of the six AA guns that were targeting them. At the moment they turned to evade the fox 1s, they were welcome with close anti-aircraft fire.

" No!" The number fifth screamed, as his aircraft collide with the snowy mountain after being riddled with holes.

The female Belkan leader, enraged by her losses, went full head-on against the Erusean mercenary. But the Erusean flew below her line of fire, avoiding the fierce attack. However, taking advantage of her opponent's loss of maneuverability, the Belkan leader was in the X-29A's six hours in no time. The forward swept-wing fighter outran her a few seconds, as she had lost a great part of her speed turning that sharply.

Then, as she was slowly shortening the distance between the two fighters, the Erusean dived suddenly, but almost at stalling speed. The Belkan pilot thought it was going to fall to the ground after such a foolish dive, but the outcome caught her utterly off-guard : the wreckage had rolled around its pitch axis almost instantaneously, causing some red out for the Erusean who winced due to the intense g-forces, but still managed to pull the trigger, sending a dual burst right into the air-to-air missile bays of the YF-23. The leader did not have the time to eject that her weaponry exploded inside her plane. Despite having just recover from great sufferance and a "master caution" alarm for structural integrity, the Erusean manage to roll his X-29A, leveling it again.

" His landing his going to be a tough one" Francis thought, as he saw the plane losing parts while flying toward the runway.

 **Valais air base, Ustio, 31/03/1995, 16:30, Weather: fall of snow.**

As soon as Pixy landed at last, snow began to fall. In his hangar, he could see the great amount of damage the Erusean had survived. The forward swept-wing fighter had not lost a entire wing, but almost a third of each. The frontal radar had been destroyed by the SPKs, along with the afterburners. It was a miracle the X-29A did not rip apart doing the crazy maneuvers Francis described. Blaise even said it was so badly damaged its pilot had to do a belly landing as the gears were unresponsive, and even if they had been responsive, the tires were surely destroyed, or riddled with Fatoan and Belkan lead. This aircraft would not be able to fly for a long time. After exiting his hangar, he quickly went to the restroom, hoping to warm himself a bit with some Glühwein, the only authorized alcohol in the base.

" Hey, did you even see the Erusean after his landing?" He asked to the pilots in the room. Francis had surely seen something, but for some raisons he decided for a time to keep his mouth shut.

" I did." A member of the cleaning staff who was playing some poker with the Halo squad said, with some restrain in his voice.

" Then what? It's a guy or a girl?" Pixy resumed his interrogation, trying to learn something about his soon-to-be next wingman. If this person wasn't, they will not have put the damaged fighter in his hangar.

" It's a killer. A very cold-hearted one.'' The brown-haired man identified as Max respond, trying to put to the back of his memory what he saw.

" And killer doesn't have gender?"

" This person… I thought he had a red flight suit. But no. He was just covered in blood, but did not care at all about that, like it was normal to be covered in blood like this person was. According to the medics, they identified more than ten different blood types. No one dare to ask him any question after they saw him in this state." He added while throwing his card on the table, turned unstable by the sight of such an amount of blood.

" So have we recruited Deadpool?" Fred joked, trying to cheer up Max.

" Well, i let you to your poker game. Where did this pilot go?" Pixy finally asked, ready to leave to clear this new merc's mysterious identity.

" To your bedroom in your hangar. Koenig was too busy responding to Oseans complaining that we violate Fato's air sovereignty and so-called neutrality." Valentin replied, while trying to figure who was going to win the poker game, according to probability.

" I don't care what those manipulative traders are thinking. Good night guys and girls." Pixy left the restroom, going back to his hangar.

The snow had stopped its fall. But the crews on the ground would have to clean the entire runway. They could put salt on it, it was no use. Snow was not something Pixy dislike at first. But if he had to live here until his death by some Belkan prototype, he would maybe come to dislike it.

When he entered the small two room prefabricate that they had added to his hangar that allowed him to go on sortie ASAP, he nodded the blooded fingerprint. They would probably stay forever on the white handle, as blood was really hard to clean.

There, he saw this black-haired person, who seemed asleep on the lower bunk of his two-stage bed, where his former flight leader -and lover- slept. The body on the red duvet was slim and athletic, but with some powerful arms and legs. Pixy would not want to fight with this guy. But another thing caught his eyes: tattoos. This person was a true tattoo lover, but he apparently chose them with a good artistic mind. On the back of his left leg there was a lightning which seems to cut a heart in half, with sparks of electricity and drops of blood all around it. On the lower part of his back he could see the beginning of a reaper emblem, whose scythe seemed to cut a Sukhoi 27 Flanker in half, but the end was masked by a black underpants, the only thing this pilot was currently wearing, despite the cold temperature of seventeen Celsius in the room, due to the lack of isolation here. The two other tattoos were a big one that spread on the upper part of his back, representing some kind of winged witch, whose staff was more a spear, which was embedded into the corpse of a black vulture, and an open crimson red rose which had in its center a pair of twin daggers instead of the stamens on her left shoulder. The only thing that puzzled him was a little fabric band below the shoulder line, turned translucid through time, maybe it was there to cover some wounds. But while Pixy starred at the tattoos who must have been hurtful for the slightly tanned skin of this person, he put himself between the heating system of the small prefabricate, and the sudden cold wake the sleeping merc, who without even turning could feel Pixy's glare.

" I know I'm a bit of a tattoo fan. Not very good for conventional soldiers, but who cares when you become a merc?" The Erusean said while stretching a bit on the bed, revealing partially another tattoo on the neck, representing a blue warrior wasp who had caught a spider in its own web and was holding it in her mandibles.

" I don't know how you manage to support the cold almost naked. I'm happy to meet the Erusean pilot for whom we have risked our lives today." Pixy tried to share a bit of happiness, even if he thought not being able to feel some since his loss.

" Well, people are always happy to be alive." The pilot said, before turning to face Pixy.

This guy had a simple face with just a little scar closed to his left eye to break its regularity. Pixy resumed the analysis of the new pilot, finding that his upper naked torso seemed a bit flattened, even if it was muscular. The fine fabric layer was tensed, he did not see the point of this person in flattening her torso, but he understood what this person was hiding when Pixy finally realized at the face of this one. It was not a he, but a she. And she apparently tried to hide her femininity under this fabric band. As he realized this fact, he turned away to not look at the not very covered woman, considering this to be impolite. But his sudden change in his glance did not stay unnoticed.

" What? For what there's to see you should not be embarrassed."

" Shouldn't you be the embarrassed one?" he rhetorically asked, not understanding the reason of hiding her identity, merc were not usually concerned about who they were or their look.

" I know, some people could consider me an androgyne, I just had to live as a boy for the last three years, so i did hide my femininity." She responded honestly, but not ready to talk about her violent and bloody past."

" Well, you don't have to now. So, I prefer if you wear this instead of nothing." He implied, giving her one of the spare flight suits of his lover. The flight suit was not only comprised of a simple anti-g suit and a thin undersuit to help support the wearing of the anti-g suit, but of a thick polar oversuit they had to wear due to the intense cold that could get down here, minus thirty was the coldest temperature ever observed.

She took it, but quickly realize who it belonged thanks to the flower flagrance it exhaled, and the Galm 1 insignia.

" It was the one of your former flight leader?" She guessed quickly.

" Ja, es war (it was). And I will not lose another flight lead." He hoped, remembering in a flash the last sight of her F-15C as she rushed to save Pixy's life to the price of hers.

" Sorry, it will take me a while to go back to wearing female clothes. But sometimes males' clothes are a bit better fitted for piloting than female ones. And the other reason i was just wearing this boxer until now was that my clothes had too much blood on it, and i do not want to spread it everywhere, so i let them to the cleaning staff." She tried to share a bit of compassion, but the neutral grave voice she learned and get used to speak with rendered her try useless, as it was too neutral to show any feeling, bad or good. She learned so much to detach herself from emotions that she could only felt them when they were at their peaks, when she was under high-pressure in flight-time.

" Well, my former flight lead use to borrow some of my sweats, i agree with your point about clothes at some point. I suppose one day you will tell us where you come from, miss Deadpool." Pixy said while sitting on one of the only two chairs in his room, still looking at the Erusean pilot.

" My name is Iskanda, Iskanda Rayien. Happy to meet the famous Solo Wing." She added after laughing a bit from the nickname he gave her, giving him her hand to shake, used to this masculine attitude instead of kissing to welcome like females usually do.

After having shaken their hands, the conversation took other turns, Pixy informing her of the state of both the front lines and her fighter. She was maybe more worried about the becoming of her fighter than the front lines. He also described all the new things he learned today: hypersthene, BAWS and those new forward swept-wing experimental fighters. He let her sleep while he went to the restroom for the evening meal, as she was very tired from her long flight from Farbanti to Valais.

When he returned after twenty, he was a bit relieved she was not awake. Because if his presentation of Iskanda to the other pilots went very well, the chief of the maintenance crews, Lukas Steller was in a very bad mood. She would not be happy to meet Herr Steller tomorrow. But tomorrow will be a day of Wende (change).

 **End of chapter.**

 **Well, it's my first one. I hope you will like it, and if you don't that's not grave, I'm open to any constructive suggestions.** **  
 **Sorry if I wait to tell who this Erusean was, I just wanted to add some suspense. And I did try adding the non-neutrality of Gebet, Recta and Facto (in the game we don't have a clue about them, not an ace from there or some people to shoot down from there). Regarding Wesson, the English version of the ace records speak only of a defense mechanism when the French version clearly used the term laser. I know that in universe the mountain are named Tyrann, but I preferred to rename then after the Valaisian Alps of Switzerland, I did not check if there was an air base there... Koenig was the name of a general in the Free French Forces in WW2. For the shape of this stellar kind of fortress of Bayes, I took inspiration from the Vauban's in France, who are very nice to see from the sky (I let you try to seek where Bayes come from). And for Herr Thesermeister, if I made him say some scientific thingies, it only derives of my formation. And herstellen in German means to manufacture.**  
 **PS: I will add some Belkan uh sorry German sometimes, which i find normal to have some, as Belka is an equivalent of Germany (but I will add the translation, don't worry)****

 **And Bis nächst mal, Reap… oups Readers.** **  
 **14/11 and 01/12/2019: some corrections...****


	3. Chapter 1: Operation Crossbow

**AN: only the operations would be labelled as chapters, other parts would have more abstract titles.**

 **Valais air base, Ustio, 2/04/1995, 12:45, Weather: light coverage, risk of snow.**

Iskanda had the time to meet the other pilots in those three days, but it was just simple talk. She did not talk about her past at all, not liking it and truly not ready to share so much darkness that would cut with the white mountains all around here. She was more of a care-about-the future and the present person than a mourn-about-the-past one. The pilot she found the most interesting was not Pixy, but Thesermeister. She was truly surprised how a physic teacher had become a merc.

" And you even use your physic knowledge in battle? I mean, i remember some lessons, but i don't see the concrete applications" She asked, curious to know what application had physics on battlefields.

" Mainly fluid mechanic, but yes I do. For example, every plane as an angle of incidence, which tell how much it can tilt on the pitch axis before increasing the risk of stall at average speed due to the loss of lift. But not every pilot knows it." Valentin said, trying to vulgarize his knowledge.

" And it's how many for my X-29A?" She asked, willing to know if the instability she liked so much had its advantage.

" Well forward swept-wing fighter have a very great angle, compared to conventional ones. I would say around sixty degrees." He answered, trying to figure the unorthodox flow of air around that kind of shape.

" I do not think it would have such angle given the number of holes there's on its wings and canopy." Halo 7 said, who had seen from very close the damaged fighter when they almost collided three days ago.

" Same for me. And Steller said composites wings where a pain in the ass to repair. Until we gain some ground and supplies i do not think you will fly it again." Pixy added, knowing that they could not use the same stuff to repair a forward swept-wing fighter than a ripped left wing on his F-15C.

" That's sad for you." Viviana said, understanding the frustration pilots could have when they saw other pilots taking off and not themselves because of maintenance issues.

" I remember that's there's a couple of very old prototypes here from the sixties or seventies. They were brought here while some are in the technical museum in Directus. Maybe you will be able to borrow one of them?" Fred tried to cheer up the Erusean who was not happy to be grounded while all the six air Unit's pilots would fight Belkan attackers.

" It would be fun, flying some old brick of steel against duraluminium three or fourth generation planes." Iskanda said with irony filling her neutral voice.

They were about to talk about the different kind of prototype when the alarms blared. It could mean only one thing. An attack was incoming. All went to the briefing room, where a worried Koenig, Johnson and a little man with grey hair and brown eyes were waiting for them.

The pilots quickly sat, waiting for the briefing to begin. They almost knew what it will be: interception. Since the fall of Directus they were on the defensive.

" Listen up! We have got a situation our hands. A major squadron of Belkan bombers has crossed our borders and made its ways here, to Valais Air Base. Apparently, they intend to attack our base to gain hegemony over the entire Republic of Ustio. Valais Air Base is our country's last line of defense, and if our base fall, no one will be left to stop Belka from taking over Ustio. Your mission is to destroy the squad of bombers and defend our base. Belka's invasion must end here!"

Koenig described the situation, emphasizing the last three words. As he talked, a map of the Valaisian Alps was displayed, with red triangle representing the Belkans forces, and another arrow comprises of blue dots representing their scattered forces. The Belkan bomber squadron was mainly comprised of Bm-335Ns Neue Lindwurm. Its characteristics where displayed: Mach 0.8 bomber with four massive engine and a twin part fuselage, with the lower part refitted with the "Nachtigall" radar, able to identify even stealth tanks and fighters in a fifty kilometer radius, using phase modulated waves, a tech only available in the Belkan air force yet. And of course, its incredible rear turret who could now not just damage fighters, but even intercept missiles with ease.

" But we have something new today, and even if you have all got to know her those last three days, I will introduce her to our unit officially now." Koenig said, before showing a picture of miss Rayien.

"Our new pilot of the mercenary unit is Iskanda Rayien, a pilot from the flight academy of Farbanti, born in San Salvation. She has demonstrated some skills over Bayes and against the Widowmaker squadron, so we can hope her skills will be useful today. She will replace your leader, Pixy, I expect you to take care of her."

" Ich werde." Pixy responded with confidence, determined to never lose another flight lead.

" I know you will. But be careful up there everyone."

After this short officialization, he turned to the little old man, and spoke again, ready to tackle the subject that would not be very pleasant to hear for the young Erusean lady:

" Everyone gets to your planes; we have some details to discuss with Iskanda and Herr Steller."

The seven pilots went out of the room, running across the runway that had been deiced through unorthodox method: flamethrowers. Even salting wasn't enough to melt the huge amount of snow that fell every day.

" Well, Herr Steller depicted me the state of your X-29A."

" I will not repeat myself; your plane is not even capable of rolling on the tarmac. And if composites are great, have good elasticity and air resistance, they are very difficult to repair, especially the ones your craft is made of. So, with our current supplies my teams cannot fix your damaged fighter." Herr Steller described, with a bit of sadness in its voice. He hated when he cannot achieve something, but he could not do anything without the proper resources

" So, I am grounded, but you said I could be useful today?" Iskanda asked curiously, quoting the word of Koenig.

" Well, your flight mates were not incorrect when they said there was some old steel-made prototypes here. In fact, there's only one that's capable of flying yet. I will show you this old piece of art." Steller said, inviting Iskanda to follow him. They walk to a hangar just next to her and Pixy's, but unlike the latter who had a fresh painting this one had almost no more paint on it.

The door slowly opened, like if they were entering in some kind of old tomb, like some peoples searching for a mysterious old powerful artefact. But this one had a power, the power of Wende (change). Covered by a Ustian flag, which his white turned yellow through time, there was a fighter. Steller pull the cover of tissue dramatically, like he was awakening someone. This fighter had small delta wings, canards alongside its cockpit, but there was a distinctive feature she never saw on other fighters: a massive air intake. Over it, with a little inclination was the nose of the fighter. It had a single exhaust port, but it seems way too big for conventional engine. The fighter had two guns just between the nose and the air intake, allowing it a great fire power.

" This is a Nord 1500 Griffon, and before you say it, it has nothing to do with the Gripen series, this is the old rival of the Mirage III. Equipped with a conventional jet engine and a ramjet engine, it can achieve Mach 2.7 without problem and even without post combustion. It had never seen usage in combat, but I think you can change the tide today with it."

" It's beautiful. Old, rusty, but i think i will handle it quickly." She said, as she come closer to the old shaped steel craft, analyzing its structure, an old one, before composites and even duraluminium.

" Then climb in it, we will fuel it. Aber, I want it back in one piece, understand. Or the ghost of my grandfather, who worked on it, will definitely haunt you forever. Verstanden, Fraulein?"

" Crystal Clear." As she climbed on a ladder which seemed as old as the steel-made craft.

" Do not forget to turn the radio on once you are fueled and your batteries charged. I will guide you for the take off."

She analyzed the old instruments, altimeters, old gauges who might have waited for forty years beneath a fine layer of dust. All was analogical, with very few screens. The only modern feature was a radar with variable radius. And the HUD, it was a head up display, but without the "display" part. Just a simple target finder to see the point of convergence of the twin guns. "Next time i will end up flying a plane with props." She mocked, as the fighter was moved away from the hangar by a little tractor. The tractor seemed maybe far newer than this plane. There was another feature that surprised her: this plane has two throttle sticks. What was the aim of having two? She had to wait as her aircraft was refueled, seeing her wingmates taking flight with a simple thrust of their afterburners. She didn't know if this old junk would take off without falling to her death three second later. She cleaned a bit the dust, seeing old Belkan switches such as Hilfdrucksmittel or a gauge indicating "Strahltriebwerks-mindest-Geschwindigkeitsgrenze". She did understand the first was referring to the fluid this aircraft needed to maneuver, with such plane possessing no fly-by-wire control for sure, but for the second indicator she could recognize only two words: Geschwindigkeit for speed and Grenze for boundary.

Five minutes later her batteries and tanks were full, she could finally put her aircraft online. Putting her helmet, but not her oxygen mask, as it wasn't needed for middle altitude interception, she heard again the voice of Herr Steller:

" I'm in the control tower. Turn on the conventional engine. The Grenze indicator will show you when you had to go in ramjet mode or when to return in normal mode."

" Very good. Galm 1, taking off!" She said as she pushed the throttle stick to its maximum. The old reactor buzzed a little but came to life shortly. She disengaged the brakes as it was online, letting the speed rise on the old counter: one hundred, two hundred. Even if it was old, this aircraft surely packed some punch.

" Gut. You will have to reach Mach 0.8 to go in ramjet. Try to maneuver a bit until then."

" Well, what about my weaponry? Do I have just guns or something I can lock on?" She asked, while doing some turns, even a few high-g ones. It was good to feel some g after being grounded for three days.

" This aircraft was not intended to carry IR-guided nor radar guided missiles and cannot be fitted with a targeting pod for semi-active missiles. You have just some high velocity rockets and twin mounted 37mm cannons. Those HVRs were designed to penetrate bunkers but they should do the job fine against Lindwurms if you shot them head-on on the cockpit or the Nachtigall." Steller quickly responded, hoping this sortie will not end in a disaster and a loss for aeronautical history.

" So, it's gonna be HVRs time. Passing in ramjet now!" She yelled joyfully, as she turned off the normal engine slowly and activate the ramjet one. In a matter of second she passed the sound barrier, causing her plane to shake a bit but it was fine. And the acceleration was not stopping. She quickly reached Mach 2. At this velocity, she was going to rejoin with the other Ustian craft in no time. She could already see seven white dots on her radar in long range mode.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 13:00, Weather: little fall of snow.**

Pixy heard a loud sound that was coming from the base, and a quick look at his radar indicate him that a supersonic airplane was incoming. As it was sending no IFF, he was cautious. But he quickly recognized the shape of the old steel-made airplane. He did not think the Griffon would fly one day, and above all that someone would be crazy enough to fly it.

" He really made you fly the Griffon?" He asked to his new wingmate, a bit astonished by the speed of the forty-five years old fighter.

" Yes Pixy! And I love its astonishing speed already." She said, as she was push on her siege by the terrific linear acceleration.

" This is base command. Guess all you guys and girls manage to get up." Henri said, surprised like all the other to see the unusual radar spot of the steel-made Griffon

" Well taking off with the Griffon was not the easiest thing to do, but now that I am in the air, I can face anything." Galm 1 said, confident in the speed of her aircraft. Pixy on the other hand was forced to use his afterburners at their peaks to stay lined up with the Griffon which had achieved a speed of Mach 2.5, which was the maximum speed of his F-15C.

"Galm 1, Galm 2, Komyeta 1, Komyeta 2, Halo 5, 7, 10 and 12, maintain present course." Koenig ordered, even if he obviously know no one would turn back. The merc were well enough paid for that, and even without it, their contract was considering retreating as a betrayal. Anyone retreating without the authorization would endure a fate worse than death for a pilot, as no one would hire them ever again.

" This is Galm 2, roger that." Pixy agreed with the order, follow by other "Roger that" of the entire aerial unit.

" Bearing 315 Belkan bombers approaching." Henri indicated.

The huge spot in this bearing was fairly visible: Bm-335Ns were no stealth plane at all, and their escort was not comprised of such planes, but of full batches of F-5Es and F-4Es.

" Nobody wants to bail out over a mountain of ice. We are counting on you, flight leader." Johnson said, hoping they will not have to lose time searching for downed pilot in such a hazardous environment, which rendered Search and Rescue operation very dangerous for their simple SA342 Gazelles.

"You'd better have our money ready and waiting." Pixy grinned, playing a bit the money thirsty mercenary.

"That's only if we both make it through alive." Koenig specified.

" Be ready to pay up. We'll be back before you even know it.'' Pixy rejected the whisper of failure that the tragic souvenirs of the fall of Directus were reminding him.

" And if the Fraulein keeps the Griffon in one piece." Steller added.

" I will. Try to keep with your new three and fourth generation fighters, the others. Because I will not wait for you to steal my kills." Iskanda retorted, pushing the ramjet engine throttle stick to its peak, outrunning the Sukhoi 33s and the F-14Ds. Although Pixy managed to stay close to his leader for a time, he and the other Eagles were quickly outrun, even with full afterburner on.

 **Over the Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 13:05, Weather: cloudy, light fall of snow.**

With the archaic radar of the Griffon on long range mode, she could see all the Belkan Bm-335Ns approaching, but the fighters were too little that she could not identify them properly. But whatever the plane they were piloting, she had already figuring out what they would need soon: more a snow speeder than a fighter if they wanted to survive on those iced valleys and mountains that were forming the Valaisian Alps.

" Belkan Bomber approaching, bearing 315. all planes, intercept." Koenig repeated, even if the Belkan could only come from the west.

" Roger. I have already a lone F-5E in my sights." Iskanda said, her ramjet engine allowing her to arrive on the combat zone first. Without even slowing down a bit, she just curved a bit her plane trajectory, lining it with the future path of the F-5E. The F-5E pilot, was unable to identify the craft, he fought it was maybe a Migalev 31 to achieve such speeds, but even before he could relay this to the bomber he was scouting for, two twin guns shattered his fuselage and engine. The first plane of this squadron was down.

Then, without noticing Pixy who was still five hundred meters behind her, she rushed toward two Bm-335Ns, attacking them head on. She fired three of her HVRs on the left one, before doing a barrel roll to the right and quickly firing three others as she passed just over hit. She thought that with three rockets hitting the bomber its rear gun would be offline, but she was wrong. She was forced to make a vertical climb to evade the close-range anti-aircraft fire.

While she leveled up her plane after a five hundred meters ascension, she saw that Pixy had already caught up with her. Being equipped with more than a dozen of XMAAs and QAAMs, he quickly dispatched the F-4Es that were escorting one bomber with a volley of three XMAAs, before downing head on the Lindwurm with two QAAMs, the first destroying the Nachtigall and the second detonating inside the enemy craft. Three other F-4Es tried to attack him from the side, but a volley of XLAAs destroy them. The F-14Ds where the first to catch up, with them their geometrical wings fully closed.

" Eh, do not act all alone, the Erusean." Halo 14 said, trying to catch with Iskanda as she was on his way to the second wave of bombers, comprised of 6 Bm-335Ns, with 6 F-4Es and 8 F-5Es as escort.

" Sorry, tourist first." Galm 1 answered.

" Fox 1, Fox 1." Halo 7 said as he released two of his SAAMs toward a pair of enemy bombers, which had just taken hits from the Griffon's HVRs. They were the two in the middle, and their destruction opened a gap in the formation.

" I hope we will have finish this quick, so we could drink some Glühwein after it." Halo 5 said, as he locked three escorts, but only one F-5E was destroyed, while the two others escaped.

" Why not, i've heard that this spiced hot wine is the only peaceful Belkan achievement. But we still have some job to do here." Iskanda said a few second after she had past right between the falling bombers, she could see some fighters engaging her, but they seemed a bit reluctant in their attacks against this unknown craft. And its speed made it almost invulnerable to their futile shots. After she avoided some SAAMs with two sharp turns, she managed to get behind a F-4E who tried to outrun her, but it was no use. She finally gunned him just below a Lindwurm, after ten second of course. As the fighter exploded, some parts collide on the Nachtigall, disabling it.

" This is Otto 5, Radar is offline, I'm retreating." The pilot complained, but he did not for a long time. His bomber was struck by two of Valentin's Sukhoi 33's XMAAs and fell in flame to the iced ground.

" They killed an aircraft that was unable to fight. Filthy mercenaries!" A Belkan cursed, as he left the formation to head toward Komyeta 1. But as he was just one hundred meter from locking range when he heard the loud sound of the Griffon, who accelerated at what seemed a unrealistic pace to the Belkan pilot, and a second later, his reactor exploded, hit by a burst from Galm 1.

" Thanks, Galm 1." Valentin said, as his and Iskanda's plane crossed.

" You're welcome" She said while returning into the fire ball without going below the sonic barrier. The 6 bombers had fallen due to the Ustian fighters, and the escorts were now only fighting for their lives.

The last of the wave was dispatched by two XLAAs from Viviane's F-14D. A F-5E tried to shoot her down but at the risk of being hit she opened the geometrical wings of her SuperTomcat making him overshoot. He then tried to run as the F-14D had lost quite a great amount of speed, but she locked him with her XLAAs. She launched one, and one second after Galm 1's Griffon just flew right past her, outrunning the long-range missile and stealing her kill. The F-5E was ripped apart by the Griffon's bullet, but he also took the XLAA with him. The fighter didn't even have the time to burn, he exploded immediately.

" Come on, miss Deadpool, do not steal my kill with your old junk." She complained, trying to catch the Griffon but the ramjet powered fighter was already heading to another airplane.

" Well, at least her plane is not a Junkers, or it would be even funnier." Halo 5 joked, referring to the first full metallic plane.

" Sorry, i have a killscore to maintain." Galm 1 retorted, as she was firing a HVR on a F-5E she had attacked head on, firing the rocket with her plane inverted to avoid the F-5E's bullets.

" Well, at least i have 60 kills shared with Morgana." Halo 14 compensated, knowing that this Griffon had only good results because it was solely against F-5Es and F-4Es. Against more mobile dogfighters such an interceptor would be in trouble.

" I sunk two cruisers and an Aegis with my X-29A on my way here. They were stuck for some seconds in some sort of ship elevator, and I destroy the system with two of my FAEBs." Galm 1 said, going a bit overboard, but she did not keep this competition for long: she had seen very tiny blimps on her radar, at a 10000m altitude.

" If we had to attack the Futuro Canal i will do better!" Morgana snapped back, while firing two XLAA on the fighters in front of her. The closest was not locked, but the two further were shot down. But as he lost speed, avoiding missiles that were not for him, he did not have the time to recover before the conventional missile of the Super Tomcat struck him down.

" Galm 1, Nothing else to say?" Halo 5 asked to Iskanda, who was silent since she had rushed toward the bearing 285, from where the stealth blimps seemed to be coming.

" Just making some scouting, I believe I've spotted some stealth but I'm not sure."

" How could she see stealth and not us ?" Aleksei asked, wondering how an older plane could perform better on this field than his.

" Old planes have not the same wavelength of radar, and stealth of today are made to be stealth for actual tech, so it's not unusual if she can see a F-117A for example." His brother Valentin explained while gunning down a F-4E he just made stall.

" Thanks for the physics lessons. I've definitely 4 F-117As, I can handle them, I let you the third wave." Iskanda said while heading for the stealth. Pixy has just killed the last F-4E with a QAAM fire at his ten o'clock, and the seven planes headed toward another six Bomber formation.

The Belkan pilots of the stealth squadron were not happy at all: their plan had been discovered. They intended to bypass the Ustian fighters, but they did not expect to be found that quickly. Although, they knew they were not the only Trojan horse that was trying to slip through the Ustian forces. So, the leader, when he saw the Griffon rushing toward them at Mach 2.6, did try to evade. He needed to buy some time for the others.

"Schwarze Falke 1, delay the attack and proceed evasive maneuvers. Give the Valkyrie the time to begin the Ragnarök!" He ordered, trying desperately to dive to go out of the line of fire of the Griffon's twin guns, but he knew deep inside he would never manage to get out of her line of fire. She was too fast, so fast he had not even the time to make her overshoot.

" Strange" this was the least that Galm 1 thought as she heard the order of their leader.

" Roger." The three over members replied, diving to get a bit of airspeed, their aircrafts being tortoise compared to a ramjet powered one. As they just ended their replies, the Griffon was firing on their leader, tearing the fragile stealth into pieces. Then a confident Galm 1 did a great curve, outrunning them for a few seconds before going back to hunt them.

" It's no use! Try to take this one down with you if you had to!" The number three said, as he just saw his wingmate going in flames.

When he saw the delta wing aircraft coming toward him, he climbed, trying to get followed. Then, doing his best to evade the fire with the very little maneuverability of his plane, he stalled, falling right on where the Ustian was supposed to be. But his maneuver failed, as Iskanda make a quick Himmelman, letting the F-117A spiraling to his death, its weak engine not powerful enough to counter the fall.

On the far northern side of the map, the Ustian fighters were destroying the enemy squadron easily, having destroyed the bombers head-on with pairs of XLAAs, XMAAs or SAAMs according to their respective ordnance. The Belkan fighters fell quickly before them, having just an advantage of two to one. There were just a few survivors when Iskanda came back from her stealth killstreak. She managed to bag a kill, but it was not a glorious one: a lone F-5E, who had evaded one SAAMs from Halo 7, but as he lost too much speed doing so, it did not take much time for the Griffon to close the gap and tore the fighter apart in a twin burst.

"- This is Valais Air Base, only the rear guard remaining." Johnson said, looking on his radar to see that only two Bm-335Ns and four Migalev 21s were left. But still, the word "Valkyrie" staid stuck in his mind, trying to figure what was the last order.

The response was given by Komyeta 2. As he climbed to escape the last bullet of the already downed last Lindwurm, he got a read at very high altitude, coming up in high speed. There was no stealth, but a group of XB-70 Valkyries without escort. They were at more than 20000 meters, making this an unreachable altitude for his Sukhoi 33s, so he reported this new data asap:

" Komyeta 2 here, I've got some bandits very high, too much for my engines."

" The Osean satellites have confirmed this. But none of our fighter can reach this altitude in due time." Johnson complained, hitting his desk hard with his fist in rage.

" Keep your cool, major. The ramjet engine of the Griffon can theoretically perform flights at 30 kms." Steller said, quoting the capacities of the very good ramjet engine.

" This is Galm 1, i understand that. I'm climbing right now." She indicated, putting the throttle stick of the ramjet engine to its maximum, and adjusting her oxygen mask needed due to the very low pression at the altitude she was going to achieve.

Mach 2 was reached in less than ten seconds, during which she was pushed on her siege by the sudden acceleration. She saw nothing that could prevent her from dealing with those 4 Valkyries.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 13:20, Weather: little fall of snow.**

It was not very difficult for the Belkans to see the rushing Griffon. Its steel-made structure was the least stealthy stuff ever, and its current speed gave it a very big thermal signature because of air friction. They had received a special paintjob for this bombing: white on the top and with a dark blue below, as the sky usually darkened when it snows. Their emblem was a dark snake with two big blooded fangs that seemed to be escaping out of some kind of grave.

" Ragnarök 1 to all, we are followed." Their leader announced, as the Griffon had just reached 18000 meters on his radar. Their XB-70 had very good ECM systems and chaff dispensers to help counter long-range missile such as the XLAAs a MiG 31 - the king of interceptors- would be carrying. But against rockets and guns, their six output engines had very low resilience.

" Ragnarök 3 roger. Readying the Vogel. Hans, Abtrennung!"

The said Hans, who was sat where the radio and intelligence officer would be, was next to a remote-control panel. He was ready to give this Erusean merc a very bad day.

Iskanda understand what this Vogel was when she reached 19 kilometers. The third XB-70 did not have a bomb bay, but a big drone strapped on it. It was not some kind of recon drone, more of a fighter kind of. It had a dagger shape with what seems to be two closed geometrical wings. As the word " Abtrennung " was confirmed by a Belkan, the drone was released, falling right on her path. The two geometrical wings expanded in a curious fashion: they were now oriented backward, while the pinkish light of its afterburners highlighting the sky.

The drone rushed on her. Its gun was placed in an internal bay, a bit like the F-22A's, but this stealthy feature allowed Iskanda to know one second before it was firing. Doing a barrel-roll to the left, she evaded the gunfire, without turning away from her path toward the bombers.

But, using twin air brakes, the drone turned extremely sharp. A pilot would have fallen unconscious due to the G-Forces, but drones could make 20 G turn without any issue. In less than five seconds it was in her six.

" Verschlossen!" The Belkan said, as two QAAMs were launched from an internal bay.

" I'm not done yet!" Galm 1 retorted, not willing to abandon against some big remote-controlled toy.

Pulling as hard as she could, Iskanda escape the two missiles by a hairpin bend. Then she resumed her turn to get on the six of the UAV, making a horizontal loop.

But the UAV manage to avoid her twin guns by making a small barrel-roll who make it arrive just next to her craft. If she decelerated, the drone would use its air brakes, and the drone seemed to be capable to keep with the speed of her ramjet-powered plane.

For two minutes, they kept flying very close one to the other, each of both trying to outmaneuver for some seconds the other one to get a lock, the skills of Iskanda and of the drone controller seemed to be equal. But after a streak of very sharp turns, the backward swept-wing drone seemed to stall a bit. Iskanda decided to take this opportunity, and reducing greatly her thrust, she managed to get on its six while it was recovering from its loss of speed. Two well-adjusted gun bursts cut the right wing of the drone.

" I got you!" She finally said, as the drone tried to climb, but only to be met by two other gun bursts, as she followed the path of the Vogel.

But as she was on the verge of victory, she did not watch carefully enough her gauge of speed, as it was not on her HUD. And the indicator finishing by "Grenze" turned to a bright red. Her commands began to feel sluggish, as the fluid was submitted to the intense vibrations created by the stall. And she fell, the air not entering at a speed high enough for her ramjet engine to produce thrust.

" Viel Glück!" The Belkan drone controller laughed at her as she was falling, trying desperately to level up her plane or to reactivate the conventional jet engine.

" You're right Hans. Even if you have lost the ability to pilot a plane by yourself, you're still a very good pilot." The pilot of the bomber said, while looking to the man on the remote system, who had lost a limb after being shot over Directus by none other than Pixy's former leader.

" I did not get the first Galm 1, but I got the second one!" Hans enjoyed his almost kill. For him, the Griffon had no chance to recover from this fall.

The fall, and the G-forces induced by it, caused a ten-second blackout to the pilot who was not used to falling from such heights in such a short time. After painfully recovering from it, her eyes making her suffer like if some maniac shoot her small needles in them, Iskanda tried desperately to get back online the conventional jet engine, but she was met here by the flaw of the Griffon: a weak jet engine for a very powerful ramjet, this being the factor that made its creators abandon the project.

" Is there any solution to recover from this fall?" She asked worried by the situation and the thrill of near-death experience that usually got her a pleasant adrenaline surge induced only a great headache instead of the sweet exciting sensation. She was definitely going to need some painkillers after this flight.

" Use the Hilfsdrucksmittel switch to recover the fluid pressure, you should regain a bit of your maneuverability." Steller guessed, fully aware of the maybe-fatal design flaw of the Griffon.

" Do not try to recover. Fall full head-on to the ground, you should gain enough speed to reach the minimum speed for your ramjet engine." Komyeta one added, his mind trying to figure quickly a basic fall of object with gravity and drag.

" I will follow you both, I trust Thesermeister for the physic part of my future path, and Steller for the technical part." She agreed with both advices, and with a cooled spirit, dived toward the iced mountains.

" Well if we both failed, it will mean we have achieved theory and practice: something does not work, and we do not know why." Valentin said, trying to draw some irony out of the potentially tragic situation.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 13:40, Weather: medium fall of snow.**

Ragnarök 1 was confident. His lead XB-70 just needed only five more kilometers to be in effective range against this little skiing station they dared to call a base.

" Are you sure she cannot recover?" The number 4 asked. He had not seen the aircraft crashing, but it could be due to the cloud of snow below them that were hard for his radar to penetrate.

" It's physically impossible, I assure you." The number 2 responded, a bit overconfident.

As they were chatting over Iskanda's probability of survival, she was effectively trying to survive. She had followed both advices, and after a five-kilometers fall, was already back at Mach 1. Her ramjet engine was usable again, but she had only four kilometers to inverse his path, and less than five minutes to intercept the first bomber. Slowly tilting her plane around the pitch axis, she decreased a bit her speed, but her plane was already leveling up. All Ustian pilots were watching her recovering from her almost eight-kilometers fall, as her failure would mean a success for the four XB-70 they could not intercept.

And after one minute under very high stress for both her and the aircraft, she was finally back to her interception duties. Ignoring the pain of the G-Forces, she was already climbing at Mach 1.5.

" Ragnarök 1, only one minute before dropping!" The leader already enjoyed, overconfident. Lost in his future pride he was going to gain; he did not focus on the very reduced thermal signature that was closing by. Indeed, if Iskanda was very visible in open sky, the heavy lead-colored clouds of snow were masking her approach.

" I don't think our defense will be able to intercept their ordnance." Johnson said, worried after the dramatic fall and recovery of Galm 1, but he lost her both on radio and radar when she entered the heavy cloud.

" Well, she's our only hope to survive now. But i know from experience that men and women usually give their best after very close near-death experience." Koenig said, keeping his cool and thinking a bit to his son that was exiled in Osea, which at this very moment he did not know if he was going to see him again in this life.

" Thirty seconds. Opening bomb bay." The Belkan leader ordered to his wingmate.

" I will never be able to shoot the first before it dropped its ordnance." Iskanda mused, analyzing quickly the situation that was not going well. She had only ten HVRs left and 200 rounds of gun ammo. So, in her mind only one very hazardous idea emerged, and she was going to follow it. She knew that Steller's ancestor would accept that his creation took one or two shrapnels to allow a base, and more than a base, an exiled nation in its own territory to survive

" Only twelve seconds before dropping. Zehn, neun..." The Belkan leader started to count down.

" We are going to do one hell of a score.'' His copilot added, already looking in the bomb bay view the buildings of Valais Air Base.

" I have a better suggestion: let me settle your score in hell!" Iskanda rudely interrupted them, climbing right under their bomb bay.

Suddenly worried by the arrival, and furthermore, the survival of this foe, they had the time to drop a handful of bombs, but Galm 1 had already launched all of her rockets but one toward them in the same time. And one of their heavy penetration bombs suffered a direct hit from one of her high velocity rockets, exploding fifty meters below them, obliterating every other bomb they just dropped. And flying through the cloud of small metallic parts in suspension, the Griffon rush toward them, launching its last rocket in their bomb bay, before another array of bombs was ready to be dropped.

The two pilots did not suffer, as a part of their ordnance was composed of napalm bombs, whose explosion plunged the XB-70 into hell instantly. Without hesitating a single instant, Iskanda flew right through the flames that were spreading in the air. A few alarms as well as Steller's voice screamed, but she did not notice them. She then did a great loop, climbing five hundred meters to extinguish the nascent flames on her wings, before doing a split-S toward the line of three Valkyrie ready to drop their payload. The steel-made wings heated a bit, glowing in a very dark red, but due to the very cold external temperature at this altitude the heat dissipated very quickly. However, the wingtips were now shattered due to the deformation caused by high-g turns at near-melting point. The second was still one kilometer from the base, since the Valkyries did not fly in a tight formation due to their great speed, to avoid collision if one was shot down.

" I will shoot them all, and I think I will enjoy seeing you burn to your death in hell." She said, the strange mixture of stress, near-death experience and the adrenaline surge driving her a bit mad at the Belkans. But even without all those factors, she would have said the same thing, willing to spread fear in those soon-dead Belkan pilots.

She rushed at full speed head-on to the second one. Firing her gun right on its cockpit, she first saw the canopy exploding due to the pressure difference, and then it somehow caused an inner explosion that engulfed the entire craft in flames.

On the radio, she could hear the cheers of the Ustian on the ground, rejoicing at the sight of the first and the second bomber being blown up in the sky high.

She decided to let the third live a bit and went for the fourth one instead. It met the same fate, being set on fire by its incendiary payload. But like for the second XB-70 the burning was short but violent and deadly, the lack of pressure combined with the explosions themselves.

" This is Ragnarök Drei to HQ, I am sorry to announce the surprise attack has failed due to the engagement of an unknown Ustian prototype." The pilot solemnly said, as he saw the Griffon closing, and all the rest of the Valkyries that fall to the ground.

" Don't be that sorry, your intervention prove that the Nord 1500 Griffon was a good design despite a flawed jet engine." Pixy said with a huge amount of sarcasm.

" Why are you not killing us right now?" Hans demanded.

" Yeah, finish us." The pilot asked, wanting his dead to be quick and painless.

" Because I wanted you to be alive. I wanted you to know that i succeed." She said after removing her oxygen mask to have a clear voice, while closing the gap between the two crafts. "Auf Wiedersehen!" She mocked their now inevitable death, filled with the sick joy of seing her foes going into oblivion.

" At least I will have met my end after a dogfight." Hans concluded, as the sounds of guns burst echoes around them.

" Ragnarök squadron confirmed destroyed. Few, that was a bit too close." Johnson said, a bit hyperventilating.

" Take deep inhalations, Johnson. Inhale, exhale." Francis said, as he was turning back to base, followed by all the others Ustian pilots.

" Last time i heard someone saying that it was when my sister gave birth." Johnson chose to laugh from his stress.

" So what should we conclude? Is Johnson pregnant?" Fred added, laughing more than ever.

" Komyeta 2 to Halo 5 and 7, do you think we should call her Jannieson then? Or Johndaughter?"

" Did you forget this is an open channel, guys? I can hear you; you know?" Johnson tried to calm the situation, but it was no use. A massive burst of laugh spread among the waves, and even Johnson died laughing.

" Hem, if you have finished laughing up there, you are cleared to land," The control tower announced, as the runway had just been cleared from the recently fallen snow a minute ago.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 14:30** , **Weather: light fall of snow.**

They all have landed carefully, as the snow began to recover the tarmac once again. Especially for Galm 1, it was a tough landing, as her plane had a very low stability at low speed, and it had been reduced even more by the shockwaves she went through while destroying the XB-70 and their deadly ordnance.

As she was climbing down the ladder next to the Griffon, she could hear Pixy and Alekseï talking nearby, Komyeta's squadron Hangar and Galm's were just as close as her's and Pixy's. They talked about the mission, a bit about the new upgrades on the Lindwurms that they discovered today, as the attacking force over Directus was comprised of standard Bm-335s which their rear guns were not capable of shooting missiles in midair, but already capable of inflicting serious damage to airplanes.

But soon Alekseï mentioned a subject she was much more interested in: her own flight.

" So, now that you have seen her in action, how do you gauge her?" He asked to the Belkan merc. Alekseï on his part had been pretty impressed by her resilience to such high-G after her multi-kilometer fall.

" Well." he began, sweeping away the snow that started to cover his oversuit, adding white dot to the hydrophobic piece of clothes, a bit embarrassed to compare a new flight leader to his former one. " Her flight was reckless, rash, unorthodox, hazardous, almost borderline suicidal at some point."

Iskanda was not very pleased by what she heard first, feeling a cold rage growing in her mind against Foulke, as cold as the snow falling all around the base's buildings. But soon the rage was cooled by the final words of Pixy:

" But also, selfless, careful for the others, ready to put her life on the line to save the ones who cannot fight. Nobility and recklessness at the same time, it's my final judgement."

He had tried to be honest, but he could not, as he had misjudged his flight leader to be better than she was due to the sweet feeling he felt about her. He had thought her to be almost unbeatable and yet she had fallen from the sky like all the others that fell that day. He needed to move out, but it would be a long way.

" I can say she has potential." Pixy concluded his judgement, seeing her flying the Griffon was not a good way to see her dogfighting skills as the Nord 1500 was a plane made for hit-and-run tactics.

'' If she had some differential of potential with you, I fear there will be some tension between you two." Valentin said in some ambiguous manner.

" What? Verdammt you're going into your physical Witzen again." Pixy cursed, not willing to undergo a five-hour lesson of Thesermeister to explain his strange kind of joke.

" Why are you suddenly smiling, Francis?" Pixy asked, changing of subject after the try of Valentin to be jokily, as the said Ustian pilot was approaching him with a smile too big to be honest.

" Oh, nothing. I think you forget something in your judgment." Halo 7 said, who was almost bursting in laughter for no reason.

" I did not understa… Gott Verdammt es ist kalt" Pixy screamed, hit at the back of his head by a snowball launched by no more than Iskanda herself.

" You forget the "I can be stealthy even when I'm not in stealthy conditions" part." She said, while playing with another snowball she threw the second after right at Pixy's face.

" I don't like snow, it's cold, it's humid, and once it melts the water gets everywhere." Pixy complained, as he was rubbing the snow away from his face.

But it was just a mere ruse, as he crouched down the second later, avoiding another snowball, and just after having created a small ball of snow, launched it right at Viviane's torso. He quickly got up to evade the retaliation of Halo 10, and soon an all-out snowball battle began, as the pilots relaxed from having avoided total annihilation.

 **Briefing room, Valais Air Base, Ustio, 02/04/1995, 15:10, Weather: fall of snow.**

The battle had lasted for a good forty minutes. They were now exhausted and wet, as snow went through their sleeves and collars, but it was a sane exhaustion, easier to recover than high-g forces. It had required all the seriousness of Koenig and Henri to stop laughing from the radio room at the top of the control tower and send the order " All pilots, ceased hostilities, we need you to the briefing room for a debriefing."

" Thanks to you, Belka's attack on Valais Air Base has failed. Your efforts will not go unrewarded. Your actions may well decide who wins the Belkan War. I, for one, will be counting on you." Koenig congratulated them proudly for their victory of today, that had allowed Ustio to survived for some time.

" We are just doing our jobs or following our contracts for the mercs." Viviane humbly responded. She knew that just shooting a bunch of bombers wasn't going to turn the tide of war.

" Do not underestimate the consequence of their defeat. The loss of those bombers will remove some pressure from the western front and allow Osean and Sapin forces to regroup so we can launch a counterattack." Koenig resumed a bit of what could be the incoming operation. Now, after this victory, he was again confident in a turning of the tide.

" Ahem, just allow me to say one thing, Koenig." Steller intervened, a bit worry, sit on the edge of a table in the meeting room. He had not said anything since the beginning, and waited his arm crossed, like if some details were disturbing him.

" We are all hears. What's up?" The admiral wondered, hoping it was not some bad news.

" Well, I check a bit the arsenal during the operation. We do not have much here, only the amount of weaponry for one, maybe two missions." Steller described the situation, that Johnson quickly showed on the screen of the room. Indeed, there was only a bit less than what each aircraft required to be at full charge, without taking into account the unusable X-29A and the weaponry for the Griffon.

" Damn It, we cannot go like this. Are there any solutions?" Alekseï complained, saddened by the uncertain future they were facing now.

" Gebet and Recta have ceased their supplies since last week, you know, when you had to intercept those Tu-160s and their Su-32s Strike Flanker. Belka send a massive squadron of 24 Foxhounds to intercept both shipment and escort, and to make example, use these XB-70s Iskanda shot today to wipe half of their air bases. And we cannot wait for Oseans supplies, our lines are too far from theirs." Johnson said, while displaying the destruction in those two allied countries that were also born from the secession of oriental Belka like Ustio was.

" So, are we doomed to an attrition war we will lose anyway? We have no weapon factory here at Valais." Pixy said, turn upset by the situation which seemed irresolvable.

Koenig could do nothing but agree with these arguments. They had to survive alone. The powerful Osean federation was still regrouping after a deadly submarine attack in which was sunk 4 of their seven aircraft carrier. This reduced greatly the strength of the Osean Navy, and by such the strength of the allied forces.

"What could we do?" was the question on which every pilot and officer was focused on for a good fifteen minutes, which gave to all of them the time to dry up the melted snow that had set their flight suits wet.

Finally, a solution came, but again like the arrival of Iskanda or the use of the Griffon, it was a fully unexpected one.

" This is control tower, i have received a message from a private person." Henri said, with a bit of astonishment that a civilian had access to an encrypted line.

" Share with us anyway, it could not be any worse news that our level of weapon supplies." Johnson said, shrugging as he was a bit reserved on his future fate. Since he fled from Belka, he had not been the more optimistic guy. And the situation wasn't helping either.

" That's weird, because the sender used some kind of code i do not recognize." Koenig said, as a indistinct streak of letters and numbers was displayed, with no patterns of apparition.

" I want every analyst or anyone that can decipher this working on it. Especially you, Thesermeister." He ordered, but this time he had a good feeling about this message.

" Excuse me for changing the subject, but can we have the score for this mission? If it's going to be our penultimate one, I want to celebrate it." Iskanda asked, after Thesermeister got his lead pencil and went writing the full message on his draftbook to study it later.

" I show the mission scores or the ones of the following Schneeballschlacht?" Johnson rhetorically asked, even if the scores of the snowball battle were much harder to get than the real mission ones.

" The Schneeballschlacht!" All pilot said in unison, willing and ready to know who got the most his ass kicked on the ground.

" Sorry for this time Pixy, you need to improve your accuracy. Even if there's more snow in Belka than in San Salvation you have fallen way behind your leader." Valentin quickly analyzed the chart of score that display each of their "kills" in this friendly battle.

" Don't worry, as I have ended ace of this battle with five kills the drink are on me today." Iskanda smirked, happy to best for once the Ustians who had the advantage of being here since way longer than her, giving them a theoretical edge in killcount.

" Great. But just Glühwein for everyone, and do not drink too much. I do not want to have sick pilot because they get too warm with the alcohol and went outside at 2 hours without oversuit, Verstanden, Fräuleins und Herren?" Koenig warned them, not willing to send half of their pilot to the medics like last time.

" Don't worry Vati I will be the teetotaler today, you told me to watch for my flight lead, and I will." Pixy retorted to the admiral in quite a childish way, but he knew the old Belkan had some humor in his old bones.

" Pixy, next time you try some Witze you will shovel all the snow on the runway alone. Now get out, pilots, we have an encrypted message to decipher." Koenig retorted back with a good dose of Belkan sarcasm.

" Maybe i will stay here. I did not like drinking during student fest, and I did not as a teacher later. And i will be more useful her at deciphering this message." Valentin pointed out, putting his chair next to a table to work more properly.

" All right brother. Have fun with your nonlinear equations." Aleksei said while leaving his older brother to his field.

" Leave the jokes to us.'' The twins said to Pixy as they crossed the now covered in snow runway.

" At least I did try." The Belkan merc defended his poor joke.

The snow had covered the mountain that surrounded the base and all its buildings. So much that they could not even see the remains of their little snowy battle. And the lead cloud coverage did not help seeing either, as it reduce greatly the luminosity. It was only 16:00, and they could have thought it was the middle of the night as the Sun was nowhere to be seen.

" Jeez, the weather is truly cold here." Iskanda noticed, drinking a sip of Glühwein, heating herself as the warm beverage touched her lips. She was at her third mug and so began to feel a bit dizzy but hopefully Glühwein was not a strong alcoholic drink.

" Was it ironic or not?" Morgana asked, not knowing how to judge Iskanda's intonation due to her unnatural neutral tone the Erusean merc did not manage to get rid of yet.

" Not. Is there a day in the year without snow or ice here? Or at least a bit more of sun. Cold is not my concern, but i do not like humidity." Galm 1 replied, she has shown good resistance to cold by not using gloves to make the snowballs but her naked hands

" Well, from June to August the snow is replaced by green grass and local mountainous flowers, that's a nice thing to see." Viviane answered, trying to remember the short summer here that was not perfect either as there was often thunderstorm in the area due to the mountains.

" I discover your resilience to cold just yesterday." Pixy added, but he seemed a bit troubled to talk about it. " Because you put the water of our common shower on ice cold."

" Come on... Would the humorlos fierce and proud Belkan mercenary be cold-sensitive?" Viviane smirked just at the idea that they discover Pixy's weakness.

" I'm not! But if Iskanda want to bath in cold water I can get her a bath of snow for free." Galm 2 tried to restore his image of unwavering fearless merc but failed epically.

" Jerk! Be ready to be awaken by some snow tomorrow then!" The concerned wingwoman threatened him, pointing a threatening finger in his direction, very serious on her threat.

" Guess i will sleep in my plane tonight." Pixy resumed this little friendly bickering, which lasted for a long time until the evening, when a light deceived Valentin join them, having not decipher one simple word of the message.

"Our future is uncertain, but our fate is ours, our choices only belongs to us." The merc wrote down along his other thoughts in his notebook when he finally come to his bed after checking numerous times that Iskanda did not introduce snow to awake him in a very un-warmly manner. And her, a bit of her past had been reminded to her when she saw her now cleaned personal stuff on her bed. It was going to be hard to finally share it with someone, even with mercs with past more or less dark than her, but she will, in due time. But even with all the confidence and the trust she gained from the other pilots in those three days, she was not confident if they were going to still trust her once she spoke her entire dark past.

 **End of chapter.** **  
 **I do add a plane never featured in an ace combat game, but I wanted to add some French Touche to the Strangereal universe.**  
 **Soon I will begin to talk about the first part of Iskanda's past. It's going to be a dark one, so I must warn there will maybe some violent scenes later in the story (not gore but with a bit of blood). There's a little Star Wars reference hidden somewhere...**  
 **Feel free to review, like, follow. I accept constructive complaint, and i do hope you will like the way I will change the Belkan War...****


	4. Deciphering the past

_Until you embrace your full potential, you'll only be a pawn of fate, never its master._

 **Valais air base, Ustio, 07/04/1995, 10:00**

The base was silent since the message arrived. Well, the messages would be more correct, as six messages were received since the successful interception. But for a good amount of time no analyst managed to find the key. The computers were running nonstop, at the cost of some power shortages, but they did not help either. Valentin seemed to lose his nerves about it, he had never seen such illogical and nonlinear code.

Then, as he was wandering in the room where they gathered all the analysts, the solution appears. A solution that few grown-ups could have thought about. But the news of the deciphering after such delays were enough to make ring the alarm, attracting all pilots and officer to the briefing room. The messages had finally given up their secrets, at last.

All pilots seats down, waiting for Herr Thesermeister to begin, but as he struggle a bit to explain this so unorthodox method, Viviane pointed out one thing: a young adolescent girl with blond curls on her head , who seems to be playing with some colored cube that could be rearranged to make the face only in one color instead of a mixt of little colored squares. What was this young one doing in a middle of a military briefing?

" Val, I know some scientist were precocious, but isn't this young one a bit too young to be your assistant?''

" Well, Rachel, explain the key you found to miss Ingertrude, I am sure she will like it." Kovsky said, without respecting Halo 10's wish not to be called by her first name.

The young girl stopped turning the faces of her cube and show it to Ingertrude.

" See? The six messages had all a code for color if you arrange the words contained carefully and print them small enough it can fit on my Rubik's cube. And if we begin with a cross create on hit, the most common figures, we obtain an order that mean something when i resolve this game." She showed that on the little squares of color there were now little characters, which created a comprehensive message when resolved. The amount of movement based on instinct rather than mathematics had made the numeric deciphering almost impossible until now.

" How can you even solve a five by five cube? I never finish even a three by three cube." Fred asked, mesmerized by the speed at which the little girl solved this twisted game.

" You just need method. And this cube is the only thing i had the time to get when i had to flee with Opa Kerzen." She humbly responded, handing the cube to Koenig so he could read the message. She seemed to be a bit sad due to the exile in which she was forced this young, but a bit happy to show her little skills at twisted games.

" I don't think i would have figured this method by myself and it was hard enough putting the parts of the message on the cube and figuring out of which initial configuration we had to begin with." Thesermeister explained how random this method was, yet millions of times more complicated than Plutarque staff or other Enigma machines.

" Thanks, little one." Koenig patted the shoulder of the young girl, after noting some of the lines that now were making sense : a date, few coordinates delimiting an area, frequency, phase and amplitude for a signal to send or to receive some, and a few lines of description made by resistance members of their plan.

" You're welcome. If I can get my cube back I will let you to your grown-ups meeting." The little girl took back her toy with which she managed to decipher a message that computers could not.

" Innocence of Youth is always a marvel to see." Iskanda described, as the little girl left quietly the room and close politely the steel-made door. But for once her voice was not neutral, it was filled with sorrow. Sorrow that she was contemplating an age she had never lived and could not anymore.

" Yes, that's beautiful to see that hope can prevail in the heart of this new generation." Pixy added.

" Now, that this message had been deciphered through his infinitesimally unorthodox manner, we can concentrate on its meaning." Johnson cut, going back to the initial aim of this meeting.

" Of course. The date is next week, the fifteenth of April 1995, at 10:30. The covered Area is the national route 171 that get through Aarlon. And the final words are some kind of enigma: The king of jungle will soon get his kingdom back." Koenig said, reading a piece of paper where the data deciphered from the message was written.

" Isn't there an Axe and Hammer factory in this city?" Francis asked, trying to find some sense in the enigma that had surely been sent by the Ustian resistance. The only thing he was wondering where how they sent the signal without being detected by the Belkan AWACSs.

" Indeed, there's one, build in joint cooperation as an export and maintenance facility for the Sapin Air Forces. My sister used to work there before leaving for the main research and development center in Directus." Johnson said, still without any news from the said sister. He knew she was a tough girl; she was the first of the two to leave Belka, leaving by the way her husband with her two teenage daughters who choose freedom over loyalty.

" That did not explain the enigma. But taking back this factory and keeping it could still allow us to sustain ourselves until Osean forces regroup and send us some supplies." Koenig said, with the next operation already planned.

" So, we will liberate this route and city housing a factory on the fifteenth of April. Is there any chance this factory contains the necessary composites for my plane?" Iskanda guessed, not wanting to fly the Nord 1500 Griffon for the entire war. It was good for hit-and-run tactics, but she preferred highly mobile fighters like her now unusable X-29A.

" It's possible, not a very high probability but not an impossible event I would say." Herr Steller replied, not wanting either to let the Griffon in the hands of this crazy pilot. He judged her good, but she would end in a death spin sooner or later due to the flawed jet engine of the Griffon.

" Super, it's not that I don't like your little flying antiquity, but I was a bit too close to death last mission, even for my standards." Iskanda cleared her mind about the old fighter.

" Whatever, you will have to fly it to help get the aerial superiority over Aarlon, if you wanna help." Pixy said, his now established confidence in her allowing him to believe she was going to survive.

" Well, this briefing is finished. Spend your time like you want, but please avoid an all-out Schneeballschlacht, we have some officials that are spending some time outside, including minister Kerzen." Koenig warned the pilots, hoping they would keep up to card games or other non-hazardous games.

" Roger." the eight pilots answered, even if they wanted to reset the score of the previous snowball battle, especially Pixy.

But it was from a proud Belkan we are talking, and pride still motivate him, even if he had no longer Belkan nationality

" Gott Verdammt! Go to your rooms, Galm team. And you will shovel the snow of the runway for your next take-off!" A very angry Adrian Kerzen, Ustian minister of defense and relation with the allied forces ordered.

They went to their common room, with Iskanda a bit afraid of their ongoing task: the runway was maybe very short from the sky, but it would take hours to push the twenty-centimeter-thick layer of snow. And what does they had to undergo such punishment? Because a snowball avoided by Fred hit the granddaughter of Kerzen. She took it well, joining the friendly battle. But when Kerzen was hit by a stray ball, he did not like it at all, and punished the two who began the fight: Iskanda and Pixy, the second trying to restore his pride and the first not wanting to lose her rank in snowball battle.

And after two minutes of awful silence, the two pilots sitting on front of each other, Pixy broke the silence, trying to reassure his flight leader worried about the crazy task they will have to do.

" Do not worry, pilots never shovel snow. That's nothing but idle threat."

" Jeez, i was truly worried when Kerzen gave us this foolish order." Iskanda replied.

" Do you really think the snow is clean by hands?" Pixy ironically asked, laughing a bit at the idea of every pilot and soldier shoveling the snow with simple tools.

" Well i did point out a strange smell of burned napalm just before we take off last time. I thought the base took some napalm bombs but i see nothing burned." She said, wondering what could justify that smell.

" The reason is obvious: they use flamethrowers to quickly melt the snow. It's because of this that we have no more napalm bombs for our planes, as all the napalm available is strictly reserved for this use." Pixy explained. The first time he saw it, he was as astonished as Iskanda was now. Her usual neutral stance was replaced by an astonished one, her eyes wide open. But as she backed down her head in astonishment, Pixy noticed a thin leather lace on the neck of his wingmate. He never figured her out as the jewelry-loving type, so to see this caught him a bit off guard. But he could not see what kind of jewelry she was wearing; despite she wore only a thin pullover.

" Eh, why are you looking at me, Pixy? Trying to figure out what usage i would make of napalm instead of using it to melt some snow?" She said, a bit embarrassed by the strong gaze of the Belkan merc. She knew he was not some seductive nor perv kind of guy, and still need to mourn his fallen one, but she was always very cautious to the people that analyze her a bit too much, as she had to hide her identity for more than five years.

" No, even if I am sure you would find some way to use it as an anti-fighter weapon. You're the only one who would use such unconventional armaments here." Larry replied, causing her to smirk a bit at the idea of using thermobaric ordnance against planes, a idea that only Kupchenko was crazy enough to try it.

" Well, I may have one or two ideas, but i don't think it was what you were trying to deduce from me."

" You're right.' He shrugged, moving back to his first question: " I never expected you to wear some jewelry."

" That's right, it's not jewelry but souvenir. The cleaning staff gave it back to me just a few days ago, when my stuff was cleaned of all the blood I came with." She said while pulling out her strange souvenir from under her pullover.

Holding it by the leather lace, she showed it to Pixy. It was a curious ornament, more of a stylized weapon than a true jewelry. It was a twenty-centimeter harpoon with two rows of barbs. What was the more unusual was the rock it had been carved in: jade. Still, it was not what made Pixy's eyes frown. For an unknown reason, the small lines carved on the surface of the blade were not white but filled with crimson red. "What did she do with this?" Pixy thought. "Nothing good" would surely be the answer.

" If you want, I could tell the story of this souvenir of my youth, without any innocence, sorry for your cold-sensitive nature."

" Why not?" He took the blade, which was truly cold, making it turn a bit, revealing signs of abrasion on the barbs, but due to what usage, he did not know. He then gave it back to Iskanda, still wondering why all mercs had to have dark origins.

" So, let's go back to my birth, when all began."

 **San Salvation, Usean continent, 13/07/1970, 15:00.**

"It's the day i came to this world. It was a nice and sunny day, but my arrival was a pretty unwelcome one."

In a simple house in the street of San Salvation, a woman with medium tanned-skin and dark hair was waking up from a light faintness. She did not remember why she had passed out. She had been a bit weak for the last few weeks, but her doctor told her it was only a temporary illness, nothing to worry about. If only she had known what the doctor meant when he said "temporary", maybe her reaction would have been different.

The first person she saw was her older sister, to whom she had always shown a bit of disrespect for never succeeding to have a family on its own, even if it was due to a tragic event of her sister's past. But yet, she was glad to see someone caring for her. She was alone those two weeks: her twin sons where on a scholar travel in the vicinity of Salatepuga, and her husband on a business travel in North Point.

" I hope you are better now, Seymia. You really freaked me when you passed out two hours ago." Her sister welcomed her to the conscious world with a nice voice, but she knew that even with all the kindness she was able to make feel it wouldn't be enough for her to make Seymia accept the truth.

" Hello, Zharina, thanks for taking care of me." Seymia replied with a weak voice, not having fully recovered her physical strength.

" I was fearing you would never wake up, I was getting the phone to call the emergency." Zharina responded honestly. She had been worried for her sister, but yet there was now one person more to worry about.

" I do not understand why I even fainted. Until yesterday my health was perfect. I mean, i was a bit tired after my morning running, but I am usually tired after it." Her sister tried to find the reason for this sudden loss of consciousness.

" I will show you the reason." Zharina said, while leaving the bedroom.

" How can she show me the reason?" Seymia tried to assess the word of her sister.

And fifteen second later her elder sister came back, holding something wrapped in white fabric. That kind of fabric was commonly used to wrap newborn child. She did not understand anything, she had not been pregnant for twelve years with her twins, and now this one was coming out of nowhere?

" Say hello to your daughter, Seymia." Zharina handed her child, but she refused to hold that child she did not understand her origin.

" What the fuck is happening? How could I give birth and without noticing it?" She asked violently, her eyes wide open of astonishment.

" Don't be so rude with this young one, these are word that shouldn't be said in her presence." The elderly responded with a calm voice, while her sister was now sitting on the bed, holding her forehead in her right hand, trying to figure out this crazy situation.

" I do not care of this child i do not even feel growing. How does she anyway?" Seymia was now going mad, not understanding a single bit of the origin of this daughter. She never wanted a third child, and her husband neither.

" It's called a deny of pregnancy. The child grows up vertically instead of in a more usual and curvilinear way, the belly does not get bigger, so you can carry it without noticing it." She calmly explained, trying not to wake up the young newborn.

" I do not want it. I never planned to have a third child. It would change anything in the familial balance I manage to create." Her sister went from misunderstanding person to denying one.

" It's your child, you have to accept her." Zharina handed her the newborn one time again, but Seymia pushed her back with an unexpected violence, nearly making the sleeping child fell to the ground.

Zharina managed to avoid losing her balance by catching the handle of an open drawer. She had expected her sister to be cold or rude like usual, but not this violent.

" It's a deny of pregnancy? Then I deny her as my child. The abortion services should accept her." She stated the future of this child she was refusing to raise.

" You cannot do that to your own offspring. You deny her the right to have a normal life, if you do that, this child will look forever for acceptance and never find it as her own mother did not accept her in the first time!" Zharina shouted, feeling in this very moment only anger toward her sister.

And this argument lasted for a good chunk of the hour, before a decision was made. It was not the best, but it could have been far worse for the still unnamed daughter.

" So, what's happened then?" Pixy asked, bringing her back to the reality.

" My aunt didn't accept the will of her sister and adopted me. She gave me a name, Iskanda. For twelve years, she was a caring mother, giving me the acceptance and chance to be happy my own breeder denied me. I saw my brothers as cousins and my father as my uncle" She told, with her usual neutral voice and face on the verge of collapsing from all the feeling that reminding this story caused to grow within her mind: anger, sorrow, grief, hatred.

" Well, you seemed to be happy at that moment. Your true mother never said anything to you about it?" Pixy asked, a bit puzzle by how messed up her familial backstory was.

" Never said a thing about it. But in a strange fashion she decided to adopt a young girl with the same age as me. I thought of her as a nice cousine, but this time of happiness did not have an eternal duration." She responded, doing a negative sign with her head.

" You used the preterit to speak of your "Mutti". It is usually used often past actions which are now ended. I will guess she died at some point?" Pixy tried to see how this period could end, but no good conclusion came to his mind.

" Died in a stupid car crash, told me the truth as she was dying, holding me in her arms, trying to explain the situation in a way i would not hate my biologic breeder." Iskanda described the end of her childhood, lowering her eyes, speeding her words as it was always difficult to remind all the good times that she spent with the person she believed for a time to be her mother. In her heart, Zharina would always be her mother, even if she was her aunt. This is why she was always referring to Seymia as "her biologic breeder" and never as "her mother".

" I'll take a straight shot and guess it did not work?" Pixy said, knowing through the disappearance of Iskanda's neutral tone for an almost mad one.

" I tried to accept what happened, to reintegrate my former family, but they rejected me in every way possible: my adoptive sister was always saying that she was more a daughter to Seymia than me, my father who did not give a freaking sh* about me, and my mother who make me become the maid of all work at the house." She described how the situation change from messed up to unbearable.

" And what about your older twin brothers?"

" Them?" She repeated, before resuming on her description. " They were the worst ones. When i hit sixteen they tried to make sexual advances to me."

" What? Does they know it's basically incest?" Pixy gasped, really astonished how low she has been.

" But they were just coward bullies who never act hopefully."

" So, this horribly messed up situation last four years. How does it end?" He was curious to know if she had to kill someone to leave this familial coercion, which could explain the bloodstains on the harpoon.

" Very bad for some and very well for me." She said while leveling her eyes at Pixy's level. But now he did not see any more an angry or regretful woman at this moment, she was smiling in a twisted manner of the sick joy she felt that day of August 1986.

" At a bit more than the age of sixteen, the testament of my aunt was revealed, and its aftermath was quite violent to say the least." Iskanda began to recall this crazy day, during which she experimented the same sick joy the souvenirs of that day where filling her mind now.

 **San Salvation, 19/06/1986, 16:15 Weather: Thunder.**

Iskanda had waited for a long time to know the last wills of her almost mother. But yet her biological breeder did not authorize to follow her to the notary. She had once denied her the right to be accepted, and now she was denying one more right: to receive her true mother's inheritance.

When her breeder came back, she rashly went to the chimney of the house, and before Iskanda could do anything, all the papers that could have legalized her were now gone in cinder.

" I admit it's hard to bear the warm of burning papers in August, but the sight is warm enough for me, low-born daughter!" Seymia mocked her. Now Iskanda has no longer an identity, but she knew what she was, and she was not a obedient person.

" Good, now i can leave this crazy house if nothing tides me here legally speaking." Iskanda retorted, hoping to get her freedom from any way she could use.

" Oh yes, you will quit this house today even. But without your freedom, insolent mistake." Her breeder went angry again, and five seconds later...

Iskanda lose her balance after her mother slapped her a bit too hard. She stumbled on a little piece of furniture and fell just in front of the chimney were her official identity was laying amongst the cinders.

" What will you do to me that could be worse than staying here?" She tried to recover, pushing on her forearm but a foot-kick in her shoulder sent her back to the ground.

" I was not alone on the way back. Your future employers are here too."

" What? I don't get it?" She said with a puzzled voice, not understanding what her breeder was up to.

" You can come in misters. She will be a bit rough to educate but she's worth her price." Her mother welcome two white guys in their thirties with a typical bad guy look: one was blond with a scar on the left eye and in military-like clothes, and the other was bald in a leather jacket.

" The world's oldest job always needs its new workers from times to times." The bald man said, while marching toward Iskanda. He put a rope out of one of his pockets, in order to restrain the young lady currently laying on the ground.

" Was your mother truly crazy or what?" Pixy interrupted her, shocked by this cruel behavior. He knew what the world's oldest job means. Who could sell his own child and condemn him to a life of spiritual and corporal slavery?

" Nope, she just wanted to get rid of me. The others were not that cruel, they were just rude and loyal to her." She described her messed up family in a nutshell.

" Whatever, I sense you gave her something back, and more than one bad bruise." Pixy guessed, knowing from just the first mission he saw her fight in than she was not someone who would back down easily.

" Let's go back to this story, it's now my favorite part. It's gonna get bloody." She said, sick joy filling her mind. She was smiling, not from happiness, but through the pain and sufferance she had instigated in her breeder's mind and body.

 **Warning, Readers, this area is rated M for violence. Go to the next ''Valais Air Base'' mark if you want to jump it. If not, brace yourselves...**

 **San Salvation, 19/08/1986, 16:20.**

She had already figured out what her breeder was deserving her. Slavery and the destruction of her privacy, intimacy and own true identity. But as she was allowed for one second to recover, she saw something among the cinders. Something she had already seen in the house of her aunt, a strange sculpture of jade, a stylized version of a harpoon with two rows of barbs. Even if the stone was still warm and for this reason painful to carry in her naked hands, she caught it before recovering quickly. This stylized weapon had sent her a message: you will survive this day, as the jade had survived the flames. In a phoenix-like manner, she needed to rise from the ashes.

" Drop that thing, Iskanda!" Her mother ordered, as the bald man stepped back, not expecting her to recover in such a short time.

" You forget why jade is a symbol of immortality. It has great fire resilience. And the flame of my will not be silenced. " Iskanda kept her hold on the blade, even if she winced as the heat was painfully dissipated through her skin.

" Stay still, girl!" Her breeder retorted, marching toward her.

But Seymia never expected her daughter that was just a bit headstrong and insolent to act that violently in the following seconds. As her breeder tried to take the harpoon away from her, stretching her left arm to grab it, Iskanda stroke before she could even touch the jade-made blade. The heated weapon embedded itself into her raised forearm, going through the flesh. Screaming from the sudden pain, Seymia tried to kick her with her right hand, but the sufferance deprived her of the necessary strength. Iskanda blocked the weak strike, before head kicking her executioner and breeder. This made her breeder lose her balance, and the momentum created was enough to separate the flesh of the arm of the barbs of the harpoon. Seymia Raiyen was now laying on the ground, screaming due to the pain, trying to stop the blood loss on her arm.

" Stay down, girl, we do not want to harm you." The bald man said while dropping his rope to catch from behind him a water bucket he intended to throw at this girl, hoping it would knock her down.

" And what if I want to harm you?" She asked in an unnatural neutral voice, yet with an expression of sick joy on her face. The pain she was going to cause seemed to make her happy in a perverted way.

" Take that." He threw the glass bucket as she was marching toward her. She struck at the upcoming object which shattered on impact, but then slide on the spread water and fell right before him, with little cut on her arm due to the fragments of glass.

He was about to kick her with his feet, but then he fell an unbearable pain to his right knee. She had dived just next to him, and stroke right at the middle of his limb. But this time the barbs were not embedded in the flesh, so it was easier to pull the blade out of his body. As she stood up with the blade, he fell to his knees, and she stroke at him with the hold of the blade square at his temple, knocking him for good.

Then the blond man pulled out a knife from a pocket in his leather jacket. Both strike at each other at the same time while blocking each other's strike with their free arm. If he had the advantage of strength and experience, she had the one of having a longer blade. So, she could by rotating her wrist plunge two centimeters of the harpoon in his flesh when he could only make a superficial wound. She kept moving the harpoon into the wound before he let her right arm go free. But he managed to strike at her upper torso, cutting a bit through her tee-shirt and wounding her breast a bit. The wound seemed more of a burn to her chest than anything. He expected her to stepped back to recover from this very painful scar in an area sensitive for woman, but she went only more aggressive. He tried to strike at her neck, but she bent down just on time, and he strike nothing but air.

On the other hand, Iskanda kicked him in the chin after his failed tentative, and as he was recovering from this violent blow she struck in the gap between the shoulder and the neck.

A scream of pain shattered the room as the blade went into his flesh, at the same time the thunders began to shatter the sky. He wanted to act, but the overflow of adrenaline that provided first the strength to act was now paralyzing him. Iskanda got behind the stammering blond man and pulled out the now bloodstained harpoon of his body, before kicking him in his back with her right foot. The wounded man fell to the ground as the lightnings stroke for the third time.

Iskanda look at her breeder, reluctant to finish this defeated foe who was struggling to stop the blood loss. She was ready to wound someone in the middle of action, but cold blood killing was another thing. At a point, she felt the envy of slicing her breeder's lying mouth, but she restrained herself from doing so. She had maybe lost her innocence today but try not to insult the memory of her aunt. She taught Iskanda to try to accept the others, but to fight if needed too.

Letting her defeated foes laying on the ground, she ran to what she could call her room. Quickly gathering the few stuff her breeder allowed her to keep here, she then came back to the room they were still laying across. Her breeder had managed to make a compression point with a scarf and try to block her way.

" Do not try anything foolish, or i will not be aiming for the arm this time." She pointed her mother's neck with the harpoon still stained by blood and flesh.

Her mother did not do anything. Like the blond man, fear was now paralyzing her. The fear Seymia tried to instigate had been turn against her at this moment. And she was now paying the price in blood. She could do nothing but watch as her low-born daughter run out of the house without caring for the thunder outside. As Iskanda ran, she was laughing. A maniacally mad laugh that was partially covered by the cracks of thunder.

Indeed, she did not care at all. She was free now. Free from the inhibition she had to endure, and with the freedom to follow her passions. A bit of rain was not enough to cool her passion now. She kept running until outside of the town, not caring as the other persons in the streets who were a bit curious why a young girl was running away out there with this weather.

 **End of M rated section.**

 **Ustio, Valais Air Base, 7/04/1995, 13:00.**

" So, you did not kill her at this moment." Pixy assessed, knowing people with enough determination could recover from very bad injuries, both psychologically and physically speaking.

But for the first few seconds, Iskanda did not heard him. She was laughing maniacally from the same joy she felt that day. She could even sense tears of joy running down her cheeks, she was almost in overjoy just from the remembrance of the scream of terror, fear, suffering she heard that day, and was filling her with a sense of power.

" Yeah, I should have silenced her lying mouth." She responded quickly, before adding the gesture, moving the harpoon close to her own neck.

" You're all right, now?" Pixy asked after she burst again of laugh for a good five minutes, he was now a bit worried of his squad leader as she was struggling a bit to catch her breath, laughing a bit too hard.

" Why shouldn't I be all right? I am just a sick mad monstrous person who's excited about near-death experience, hearing people suffer and the idea of killing her own mother in various painful ways." She assumed her madness. If there was a therapist at the base, he would find her to be an interesting case of study for years at least.

" You're not a monster to me. Just a lost person like I see many among mercenaries. Alekseï seems tough but he's suffered PTSD after this mission in Romney he never talks about for obvious reasons. Almost everyone has suffered loss from close ones other Directus. In the end, Thesermeister is the only normal person around here. I bet it comes from his analytic mind." Pixy replied, knowing he had a bit of PTSD too since the loss of his loved one.

" That's a first, someone who sees me as a human." She accepted Pixy's answer. She was even a bit calmed in her sick laugh, thanks to Pixy's acceptance. For once she had some. Last time it was three years ago, but in better circumstances.

" So, anything to say about your past to compensate for my confession?" She inquired, willing to know a bit of Pixy's memory if she wanted to understand his mind in battle. She knew past experiences, even culture could be key factors in this case.

" Well, nothing as bloody as yours." He scratched the back of his head, trying to focus on the determining event of his past. He did not need to tell her everything, just the basics.

" I was born 1960 in the outskirt of Dinsmark, Stray A-B student from a proud humble middle-class Belkan family, get his Abitur with a good mention, enlist in the Air forces, had a six months period in the Kellerman Grupp." He began to sum up his youth.

" Kellerman Grupp ? You mean, Silber Squadron?" She was a bit caught unprepared. Kellerman, even if he was a bit old now, was still a well-known pilot not only for his own career but for the careers of pilot he taught how to fly who would often quote Kellerman in speeches after airshows.

" Yep. The best way to be trained, we even were dispatched in Wieldwakia when some officers tried to go rogue after a failed coup d'état, but we won the day and gain access to Wieldwakia's oil for Belka afterwards. And Osea had still not figured out how Belka did not run out of fuel."

" Even so we cannot attack a neutral land for that, I guess?"

" Right. Osea tried actually to attack Fato to make them change their alliance, but i think they were met by the BAWS we destroyed at Bayes Fortress." He tried to remember the report Koenig gave them that day. The Osean forces loss twenty B-52s, ten B-2As, and their escort of forty F/A-18Cs Hornets over there, while the Fatoan loss where almost insignificant.

" That did not surprise me, I knew Osean prefer quantity over quality. But still, how a good-and-proud Belkan student and fighter pilot ends up mercenary? You mess up and had to run like me or something else?" She asked him, ready to accept any truth he would say. If he had accepted her bloodstained past, she could accept a rather normal one easily.

" Let's say someone else. I was about to retire from the army to become a test pilot for SudBelka munitions factories, but she happened." He said while picking a little notebook, which revealed itself to be a makeshift photo album. On its front page there were Pixy and a pale blond-haired girl with some green and turquoise locks of hair among her head. In background it was the door of a hangar with a massive Galm squadron insignia. But it lacks the Ustian designation -666 Unit -. So, this notebook was a bit older than this war.

On the first page we could see the same girl climbing down a modified MiG 31 with some strange forward-swept canards. Typical customization of a merc who usually preferred mobility other the other characteristics of the airplane.

" She was Laura Zielter, my flight lead and more than a friend to me. Even if our first encounter was not friendly."

" Well, some romance, always nice when it's linked to passion."

" It all began during my last flight, on the seventh of August 1986."

 **Outskirt of Dinsmark, Falkennest Base, 07/08/1986, 15:00.**

Larry Foulke had just landed from what should be his last flight here. Next week, he was going to Sudentor to have a meeting with his new bosses: SüdBelka Ausrüstung Werke (south belka munition factory). He even obtained from his new bosses that he would be test pilot for the new generation of F-15 who were under development right now. But for an unknown reason the speakers of the base decided to call him to a meeting with the base commander for an unknown reason.

It did not take him long to go to the base commander office, Oberleutnant Oswin Neugel. The Belkan pilot saluted him, before waiting for the authorization to sit down. But in the gap between those two moments, he could notice an unknown pale-blond haired girl with turquoise locks wearing a leather jacket with a pale green camo and markings of hard rock bands. This person was definitely a merc, there's no way official soldiers could have worn such kind of jacket and hair color without being reported by their superiors. The glance of his brown eyes met for one second the one of her grey ones, and then his commander told him to sit down.

" Laura Zielter, I present you Larry Foulke, one of our best pilots of this base." The commander introduced him to this new person.

" I do not think i am the best, but i know how to survive in live battle." Larry humbly replied. He had only very little true battle knowledge, and not against truly worthy opponents.

" Well, you are the only one left from your batch, the other from this Kellerman class have already been dispatched to active squadrons, but you're still available due to your specific choice." Oswin resumed the situation.

" And also, what's the meaning of this reunion?" Larry asked, wondering why he was meeting this particular merc.

" B7R is quite empty since there was a need of merc due to the Aurelian civil war: some were shot down, some decided to settle after the battle in Aurelia or Leasath after meeting someone or for some contracts." She explained her quite boring situation. She had not dogfight for two months, and the last was against six J35 Draken, not a big deal for her.

" Und?"

" Foulke, you know today is the day of visit from half of Dinsmark's and Hoffnung's Gymnasium. So, a little Belkan DACT with Fraulein Zielter would be a nice advert for our Kampfflugzeugschule here." Oswin almost gave him the order to go back in his F-15C and dogfight this merc he did not even know what she was flying into.

" When will this take place?" She asked, eager to show to this man what she was made of for two reason: one, he seemed to despise mercs, and two, she did not like the look he gave her first.

" At 16:00, this leave the time for both your aircraft to be fitted with the necessary armament. Dismissed, Zielter und Foulke." Oswin ended this small unofficial briefing.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 07/04/1995, 15:00**

"What's the difference between Erusean and Belkan DACT? Do you have a pride gauge or something like that, as Belkan are as proud as an Osean is money-hungry?" Iskanda asked, curious of the secret of the legendary Belkan Air Force.

" Well first you should remove Dissimilar and Training from the acronym, as it's not a dissimilar training for one good reason: it's a life fire exercise with weakened tracers bullets and specific missiles with shockwave warheads designed to catch you in their blast without shooting you down, but the loss of control can be deadly if you are too low, as it often end in a spin." He quickly explained how terrific the training was for the new pilots. But in the end, very few resigned, even if they suffered light injuries.

"Belkans are not only proud as fudge, they are crazy too." Iskanda cursed, finding this training method not only foolish but cruel.

" You are not the good person to talk about craziness, miss "I wanna kill all my relatives and I'm happy of thinking that way." Pixy snapped back at her, sarcasm filling his voice.

" That would be a bit too long for a nickname, my dear." She smirked at his remark before dodging to another subject. "And this Kellerman Class, how was it?"

" Pretty good, only the one who lost only five AC could go into. Didn't matter how much you have won before though."

" Seems fair. Anything interesting you made with Kellerman?"

" As I have said before, we were sent to help fight some rogue officials of Wieldwakia's navy which rebel due to internal affairs, but this threatened our commercial alliances back then."

" Seems weird to me that neither Osea nor Yuktobannia tried to intervene back then, just to gain some influence at least." She pointed out, not fully aware of the very cold war those two countries had fought for a good forty years.

" They were still bickering in their little competition of who will have the bigger missiles, and who will have the better protection." Pixy mocked those two countries who consider themselves as superpowers but do not possess power at all sometimes.

" Sound like a typical male kind of argument. Let's go back to this DACT, i bet it's funnier." She concluded this little interlude.

 **Over the Falkennest Base, Dinsmark, Belka, 07/08/1986, 16:30, Weather: clear, high stratus.**

Pixy took off just after the MiG 31 of Laura Zielter. But while she passed right next to him on the runway, he had some time to figure the features she put on her aircraft. First, the canards where no standard, but some kind of forward-swept wings. And her engine output had not a circular shape, but an octagonal kind of. Maybe they were 3D vectored nozzles?

" Laura you are not identified as Scharlach 1. Larry, as Blau 1" The surveillance tower said, as the two aircraft separate before the engagement, Larry going South and Laura North West.

" Why does she have a cooler nickname than me, flight control?" Pixy asked. He did not understand, usually his TAC name was Falke 1.

" Lady first. And it's just my official callsign."

" Can I ask why?" Foulke let his curiosity spoke out. The better you knew your foe, the better you understand it, he thought, as she responded with a small laugh.

"It's due to the fact i usually left cockpit stained with the blood of the pilots when i gun them. Nothing more beautiful than seeing a dead aircraft fly for some time before you decide to blow it up."

It was a truly crazy merc, without a bit of care for her foes. But who was he to judge? Himself did not care that much when he was sent outside and shot down Wieldwakians.

" Gut. Now that you know each other, these are the rules: do not break the 1000 meters or the training SAMs will fire at you. A loss of control by the opponent due to a hit will mean a point. The first who reach 5 with a difference of three wins." The commander described the oncoming fight.

Both could see the rows of seats where dozens of students or any people attracted by those kind of AC. But for the pilots it was strictly forbidden to approach them: in order to avoid crashes, the stands were protected by a dome of glass and surrounded by heavy SPKs, able of intercepting lost ordnance or even fighter indiscriminately.

" These are good rules." Scharlach 1 agreed.

" Blau 1, ready to engage."

" Where Belkans really that crazy? I mean, fighting each other in DACT is a good exercise, but fighting with those kinds of condition is borderline suicidal at this point!" Iskanda cut the story of Pixy.

" You're not the best person to say who is crazy and who's not." The Belkan pointed out for the second time of the day, before resuming his fight.

" Blau ein, Scharlach ein, Kampf fängt jetzt an!" The commander said cheerfully, as message of good luck were heard for both pilots in the background.

The MiG-31 and the F-15C went straight for each other. One downside of those little shockwave missiles was that they require a five second lock-on. Pixy would never have the time to lock his but she wouldn't either. He tried to fire a gun burst a few dozen meters before her gun range, but she moved faster than the bullets, doing two sharp turns at a very fast pace. But it was no big surprise, this MiG was known for its maneuverability at Mach 2.5. Yet his inertia was the greater one, giving it a longer turn rate.

" Nice try, Frischling (rookie)." she mocked as they crossed.

" I wasn't trying."

Then he extended the airbrake at its peak, before beginning a hairpin turn. He felt the intense negative G-forces as his aircraft decelerate. She turned hard in the opposite direction, but not fast enough. After this exhausting turn, he was finally in her six. She set her afterburners at mid-course, still enough to outrun the slowed Eagle, but providing an obvious target for Pixy's IR sensors. She did not try to shake him off at first until he fired a pair of missiles at her.

" Fox 2." Pixy claimed already his future point. The missiles quickly closed the gap between his and her aircraft, but as they were only four hundred meters from the Migalev, the unthinkable happened : the Migalev extended air brakes composed of four layers of steel, two below and two above the plane, just after the cockpit. And what he thought that were 3D vectored nozzles revealed to be true ones, as she did a Kulbit maneuver - a figure theoretically impossible for a Foxhound - and fire a gun burst in the direction of the IR guided missiles he just sent. Yet if these missiles had a bigger warhead, they were also more vulnerable to defensive gunfire.

" Gun gun gun." She said as she pulled the trigger, and ten seconds after, as the missiles where only one hundred and fifty meters from her, they detonate in mid-air.

" This is what i called true active defense, Anfanger!" she shot verbally and physically, with a four missiles volley. She had asked the maintenance crews to keep the XLAA capacities with the training missiles, while she made sure her opponent had only conventional ones.

" What? Fox 3s?" Larry said as he dived to lose the missiles, gliding toward the altitude limit. But he did not break through it, while the radar guided missiles did, only to be shattered by the automatic SPKs.

" Nice trick to lose my missiles, I give you that. But you thought I could not dogfight with my MiG-31. But it's an Advanced Vectorial one. Du irrst, Dummkopf!" (You made a mistake, stupid). She followed him, diving on him from one thousand meter as he was slowly climbing.

She said truth: he never expected her to refit her Foxhound to give her an insane maneuverability. As he climbed, he could see her foes craft shortening quickly the distance. Then the "missile locked" alarm blared in his cockpit. Why did she have those XLAAs kind of training missiles and not him? He realized quickly that running was nutzlos. So, he turned back to face the two missiles she had just sent at him. If she was foolish then he would be too. The XLAA were too fast, and he know he would feel the shockwave pretty badly. But it could give him a small window of fire.

" You are going right into my missiles, Blau ein. Lust von Niederlage (envy of defeat), maybe?"

" Niemals! (never)." He retorted, managing to have the two missiles on his left side. This should decrease the loss of control.

And five second later, the shockwave of those XLAA hit him hard. His plane went into stall has he tried to tilt it to absorb the wave, and then into a dangerous spin. He felt his eyes become very painful as he slowly countered the spin. The G-forces were so intense that he even got some seconds of redsight.

She had seen him fall for good. Her first point. She was planning to wait for him to recover, then strike at him from above another time. But Larry had managed to bypass this spin, and put the throttle stick on PC max. She did not expect to recover this quick, and her missiles had a seven second times of lock on. So, she decided to hit the afterburners too, hoping to shake him off through sheer speed

" Not this time again, Fraulein." He warned her, as he climbed vertically to meet her trajectory. He could feel his whole plane vibrate in such a climb, and even had to turn while climbing vertically to adjust his bearing, but his aircraft did not stall. And finally, he had a very little window of fire.

His plane was almost tilted with his head toward the ground, but he was on a perfect course to have a gun kill from below. Forgetting the sufferance of flying inverted, he kept his path, and after five seconds which seemed to be an eternity fired his gun at the Foxhound. If it was a true fight her fighter would have been sent ablaze, as he hit her in the front air intake. But even those training bullet could temporarily disable this critical system.

" Gunkill!" He screamed as she dived due to her current loss of thrust. Tilting his plane back in horizontal, he then did a horizontal loop toward the falling Migalev, firing two missiles while she was recovering. Not a nice move, but she had weapon choice and advantage.

And they did hit. That makes him three points while she had only two. But he still needed two more points. He thought it would be easy to chase her after these hits. But she had fully recovered her maneuverability now, and kept swinging from side to side, using her 3D vectored nozzles at low speed, compensating for the usual flaw of the MiG at this speed domain. Larry manage to keep up for some time, yet his speed was bleeding quickly. He leveled for just three second to build some speed back, but as he did this she was already far away, thanks to the Foxhound's insane acceleration.

" Not as insane as the Nord-1500 Griffon I would say."

" Iskanda, can I end this fight?" He rhetorically asked, a bit unnerved by her third cut in his story.

And she even had the time to pull out an Himmelman before he was at locking range. Yet way before he could fire, she sent a volley of her XLAAs as rockets. Going into the fireball against all odds, Larry thought they would not detonate as they were not armed. He realized his mistakes too late when the shockwaves shook his plane like a leaf in the winter wind, but still managed to level up and fire a pair of missiles at her, even if his plane suddenly lost a great part of stability, something he did not understand why. One other thing he did not understand either was why she turned too late, and was a bit caught in the waves, but not as hard as he did

" 4 for both." The control tower announced, followed by a chorus of worried voices Larry did not understand.

Strangely, as he turned behind her after they crossed, it seemed to him that his turn rate had been shortened a bit. He was able to have a second gun kill, and even a third. But when he began chasing her for the second time, he felt his plane becoming more and more unstable, as his speed increased. However, even if this instability allowed him to do sharper turns than before, he could not get a single git on her, again. "Verdammt 3D vectored nozzles" he cursed internally.

And she did exactly the same: slowing with her unconventional air brakes, and then getting in his six through a Kulbit maneuver. Yet this time he anticipated her maneuver, and instead of trying to shoot her while she was on the move, he hit the burners, outrunning her for some time before pulling an Himmelman. He was not even inverted that he was already at gun range, and fire. But when he tried to level up to stop the half loop, his aircraft decided to lose the final bit of stability it still possessed until now. And entered in a terrible spin. However, here, the spin was not around the roll axis, but the pitch one. His aircraft was now rolling around this axis, while falling toward the ground.

" I don't understand, what is wrong with my plane?" Pixy furiously asked, under severe pain in his eyes.

" What is wrong is that you have just one wing." Scharlach 1 said. She had seen that when she got behind him and was astonished that he did not land immediately after that kind of damage.

" And you're falling. Eject while you still can!" His commander ordered, not willing to spare life for one fighter.

" I won't. I survive and land together with my pal, or we both die together!" He angrily retorted, not willing to abandon this fighter in which he achieved so much: his first acrobatics, and his first kill against a Su-27 during his external deployment.

" This is mad…" Then Larry cut the speakers, not willing anyone to disturb him while he was slowly getting out of this spin. When he extended his airbrakes, it showed on his HUD in red " Risk of structural failures". Risks? He had already lost half of the structure.

Eventually, Foulke manage to land, very painfully, as the spin caused him ten seconds of redsight, and he was still recovering from it when he landed. Quickly following him was a worried Laura. Usually she never cared for anyone in B7R. But it was against other mercs, never officials who just came out of their first real missions. So as soon as she had landed, she ran toward the half-torn Eagle.

Larry had even a bad time just getting out of his fighter. The mechanics put a ladder to help him climb out of the fighter, but he was a bit unbalanced due to the amount of negative G-forces he had to endure. One of them even had to catch him in mid-air as he missed a step, but now he was fine and on the ground. Leaning against a wall of his hangar, he was still holding his head in his hands due to his headache when the merc arrived and crouched down to be at eye level with him. He looked at her, but not with an angry gaze. Just with one of sadness.

" Look, I'm sorry for what has happened up there."

" Yeah, nice lie for a merc. Like you would care. Your kind care only about benefits." Larry said with disdain.

" I don't, you close-minded official!" She snapped at him. If he wanted to play the disdainful guy card, she was going to snap back some sense out of him. " Even mercs have a moral compass, du Dummkopf ! If it's about your plane I can pay the repair bill, I'm not a poor merc." She proposed him, hoping it will put him in a better mood.

" I'm sorry for the way I behave, the only time I saw a merc in action it was above Wieldwakia and he killed two of my closest friends without batting an eye. Kellerman shot this guy five seconds too late." He explained the prejudice he felt toward her kind, finally standing up, as the last spark of redsight in his field of view finally dissipated.

" I know, not all mercs are as honorable as me. I was a bit angry due to the disdainful glance you give me in Oswin's office if you want to know the truth."

" If you wanted to teach me a lesson, it was not the better way, but a good one anyway." He acknowledged her will, which was quite a rational one: mercs like officials are flawed, and no kind is better than the other.

" Well, maybe ripping of your wing was a bit too much. Still, I do not want to leave you with just a disdainful point of view of us mercs. I know a good Belkan traditional restaurant, better to make peace than the officer's mess." She offered him what a romantic person would call a date, and a realistic one a rendezvous.

" Aww, your end of this story is so cute." Iskanda compared his life to hers.

" Cute? I lost a wing and almost my life, miss Deadpool!" Pixy replicate with a semi angry voice. However, he knew she was right: his story was a very sweet bed of roses compared to her dark past.

" So, what's happened then? Are we gonna add some lemon to this romantic story?" She asked with a malicious smile.

" No. I will not add some. Not yet." He replied, before beginning to describe the restaurant scene.

 **Historical center of Dinsmark, Belka, 07/08/1986, 20:00.**

When she talked about a restaurant, he had thought it would be some kind of traditional dinner in the outskirt of Dinsmark near the base, not a fancy one. And it ended being one of the fanciest in the historical center of the capital of Belka. Foulke had already seen this restaurant before when visiting the street, but he never think he would enter in it: even the cheapest menu was considered very expensive, and the cheapest wine was about the equivalent of a two-month pilot wage. Definitely, this she-merc was quite a stylized and wealthy one.

The furniture was nice, using wood types such are oak and balsam, but not overwhelming either. Even if from the outside it seemed to be a very fancy and private place, from the inside it seems warm and peaceful. The perfect place he needed to be right now to cool his jets.

" So, Herr Oswin pointed out that you were going to work for SBMF ?" She asked, curious to know if the oncoming of their previous fight had changed his mind.

" For South Belkan Munition Factory ? Yeah, that's what I intended before our ...somewhat adventurous meeting i would say" He began his response. Yet, he did not know which path to choose. He could choose safety, a well and regularly paid job with few risks, or what she was the result: a risky and well-paid life full of action, battle. Not a better life though, but a livelier one.

" Did our DACT change your mind, maybe? Or just me, Frischling?" She wanted to know if she would leave Falkennest Base alone or not.

" Both of them did. I had my fair number of engagements, but nether true battles. Never moment of true passion with twelve seconds of red sight." He explained how he felt about this fight and its aftermath.

" Nice metaphor, to duel above B7R is the best, you can believe me. Besides, from my point of view, you won."

" I was no more fight worthy." He countered, as she was taking a sip of the fine red wine of South Oriental Belka (this part will become Ustio) she had ordered with the meal, which consist of chicken breast with exotic fruits , and him some duck breast with cherry. The waiters had told them they were trying sugar-salted mixture this week, and they were not deceived.

" That did not matter actually from my point of view. I do not think i could land my MiG-31X/V without my left wing. You would accomplish that in the round table, you would now be considered as one of its honorable knights." She retorted, admirative of his flying capacity that he would only restrain by flying for a company.

" Titles doesn't interest me. My survival did." He replied, not that proud of his action. A pilot that cannot preserve his plane was not a good one from his point of view this very morning. But since his DACT some tides of his mind were changing.

" So, how did this very interesting situation have ended?" Iskanda interrupted him, not wanting to know every line from his past. She did not make last her story on the other hand, but it was intentional. Who wanted to hear sufferance for whole chapters?

" Way better than I thought. And NO, we did not do anything " Special" that day. I just resigned from the Belkan air force and joined her at first as her wingmen and friend, but I can agree we were way more than friend with benefits in the end." He described the evolution of his almost nine-years-relationship with Laura.

" And where did you fight, i mean, before this war?" She asked now a bit more chilled, her lust of hearing "funny" anecdotes suppressed.

" Well, we did a good world travel: in 1988 to silently took down some smuggler operating old salvaged Yukte bombers for their trades, in 1991 against Erusea to stop their expansion, in 1992 in Romney on the rebel side where I unwillingly cross the path of the future Komyeta 2 and the future Schwarze 1, the well-known Vulture, a pilot named Zubov, and now fighting for Belka and in 1993 against mercenaries that tried to overwhelm a government in Sotoa."

" So, you have seen some countries. Outside of Erusea, Shilage, Voslage and San Salvation, i do not know that much countries." She said with a bit of boredom. Those four countries look all the same to her.

" The best thing she always said to cheer me up was that everyone deserves to find happiness at some point." He wanted to conclude on a brighter note.

" You did for a little less than ten years, and I'm sure you can find it again. I, on the other hand, will live like all demons that haunt this world: in hell." She shrugged while saying that: happiness was a feeling she did not feel truly since the death of her true mother. She could only feel the sick joy of cold passions that overwhelmed her while fighting or killing.

" As i said, you are not a monster, Iskanda. Every demon is a fallen angel, and if you have the will, maybe you will earn your wings back one day." Pixy countered her biased argumentation.

" Whatever, it's time to eat, let's join the others." She concluded the talk. If she talked again of her past, she would end up again in this sick overjoy state, and she did not want to. It was a part of her she hated to show to others.

" Better not starting a Schneeballschlacht again." He said as they were walking through the snowed runway. This earn him a small laugh from Iskanda, but this time it was a normal one, not one born out of sick cold passions.

She had shared her story with him, but would the other show the same acceptance? She was not very sure, but she felt confident as she walked through the restroom.

 **End of chapter.**

 **Well, I will surely put some markers if you want to jump the bloodiest part of Iskanda's story. If this story was a crossover, I'm sure she would end up in the assassin Creed universe at some point. But whatever, she would learn that there's always light, even in the darkest nights. It's my first flashback, say me if you like this type of writing for those, with these little analysis of their own story by themselves mixed in their story.**

 **I know that MiG 31 cannot do post stall maneuver, but who cares, Laura fly a tuned one, so she can do anything with it.**

 **And bis nächst mal, reader**

 **Small corrections and a time set on the 05/06/19** **and the 29/07.**


	5. Chapter 2: Operation Roselein

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 15/04/1995, 10:00**

It had been way harder for Iskanda to explain again her past to the others than Pixy in this week. All of them had shown compassion, Fred a bit of fear due to the gruesome acts she described, and Valentin had tried to find some logic in her mother act but did not succeed. Alekseï was the most comprehensive one, he knew what traumatism meant since he fought in Romney, and on the wrong side from an historic standpoint.

" At least you do not see me as a non-sentient monster who just want to rip apart the throat of her own mother with a jade harpoon." Iskanda concluded after analyzing their reactions.

" You are not a monster." Alekseï replied. "But just someone who has lost her way in darkness and try to find it again."

" It's always harder to crush the shadow within you than to live within it because it's the only thing you have left." Pixy added in a philosophical manner, as he like a bit more the use of metaphors to tell his mind than just telling it straight.

" Thanks, Herr Denker. I truly hope we will find whatever Steller need to repair my X-29A, because three missions with the Griffon would be too much even for me." Iskanda said, referring to the flawed jet she had to use currently.

" I thought you said you loved its astonishing speed." Viviane pointed out.

" Yes, i did. But i do prefer high mobile unstable fighter than hit-and-run interceptors." Iskanda stated her mind about her flight style.

" Well, you will have the freedom to see this in a few minutes." Koenig interrupted them in their talks. " Briefing for the operation Roselein now."

All the pilots left the restroom, with the best luck wishes of the staff.

They were greeted this time by another map. This time it showed the North of Sapin and the South-West of Ustio, but it was centered around one main goal: the route 171, who could be used as a supply line for Osea, Sapin and Ustio. But the factory and its weaponry located in the city of Aarlon were more precious than anything for the Ustian army. Furthermore, the road itself was too far away from the frontlines where Sapin and Belka were fighting, so it would be unusable for at least one week or two.

" We must regain control over Route 171, which runs through Arlon, to cut the Belkan advanced Units from their supply lines. There are bridges over this route, three over the Aare River, all heavily guarded by the Belkan Armored Corps. Securing this route is critical for Sapin to counterattack on the Belkan advanced ground forces. Destroy the Belkan ground units blocking passage along this route and secure the Axe and Hammer facility that the Sapins and our Ustian workers mentioned in their cryptic message."

" Do not forget that in order to retake the city without civilian casualties, the only pilot that are authorized to provide CAS are our twin witches and our four Gazelles, which are already en route." Johnson specified, the unguided bombs or the rockets would be nuts in a city with very tight streets at some points.

" Don't worry, we will do a clean work today." Alekseï promised.

" Besides, we will be watching you, with their last defeat, they have lost the bombers close to the frontlines, so we can finally use the AWACS today." Koenig concluded the briefing. This operation was deemed to be successful. He had foreseen it. But since when does operation went as planned? Never was the answer.

 **Near Aarlon, Sapin, 15/04/1995, 10:20, Weather: clear.**

The first aircraft to be in the area was the Griffon, followed close by the three others F-15s. They had seen the Gazelles slowly moving on their way toward the city, and both units had wished good luck to one another. But it was not very long until they were noticed by the Belkans long range radars.

" Ustian fighters? They must be desperate to come this far." A Belkan radar operator commented.

" Whatever, those thugs who call themselves resistance fighters have set up some coup, and I do not want to suffer from it." The commander replied.

" This road is Belkan advanced troops' blood perfusion. Time to make it bleed." Iskanda said, as she saw the first groups of tanks near the first bridge and one windmill, bloodlust filling her mind.

" This is AWACS Eagle Eye, i hope you will not have a bloodbath again, the cleaning staff said us it was hell to clean your stuff." Johnson said, overseeing the slow approach of the Gazelle. They started their flight at 9, and they still got a half hour until they reached the area of action.

" Do not worry Eagle Eye. Let's win this up." Galm 2 added, catching up with the Griffon.

" I take care of the Armored Personnel Carrier on the first bridge, Pixy you take out the tanks after the bridge." Galm 1 said, flying low to avoid being targeted by long-range SAMs.

" Roger." Her wingmen replied.

The Griffon rushed on the three APCs like a wildebeest running after its prey. Launching three HVRs, Iskanda destroyed the light armored vehicles, strafing the area to eliminate the survivors that get out of the burning APCs. Meanwhile, Pixy dropped a single UGLB on the two tanks. The shrapnels penetrated the tanks violently, triggering an inside explosion which left only burned pieces of steel.

" Wait, why are the windmills set as unnecessary targets?" Halo 5 asked. He was ready to destroy the first if needed, having already one missile locked onto it.

" They are emitting some kind of radio signal, so we stated them as potentials hideouts for weapons or shoulder-mounted SAMs." Eagle Eye responded.

But just after he finished his sentence, a strong sizzle sound could be heard on the waves. After some seconds, switching to the frequency sent a week ago, the AWACS radio officers could finally have a clear line, and all could hear the senders:

" This is Cuervo (Raven) of the Sapin resistance. We are using the windmills metallic structure as antennas. Be sure they survived the battle, or the Belkans will be able to pinpoint us."

" Galm 1 here, I have some Migalev 21s on approach, moving to intercept."

" Galm 2, following." her wingmen added, after strafing a pair of AA guns.

" Thanks for the support, Ustians. We need you to claim aerial superiority above Aarlon, and then our forces will take action."

" This is Jungle 1, i think we can do this." the leader of the chopper squadron said.

" What about the houses and farms, are there some Belkan supplies?" Viviane asked to the resistance, as she flew over one while Galm 1 and 2 were taking head on six MiG-21s.

" They have only SAMs and Flaks there. Burn them all, your choppers need a clear path." The resistance member replied.

" Save your GPBs for CAS in Aarlon, Halo 10. My brother and I could handle these AA artillery pieces." Alekseï argued, knowing that their RCLs were no the kind of weapon used for precise CAS.

" I will help the Galm team against the aerial forces then. XLAAs ready." Morgana said, moving away from the Flaks and SAMs.

Going low, the Sea Flankers attacked the Belkans unprepared as they were still targeting the member of the Halo squad. Firing full volleys of rockets, they cleansed the area of Belkans. The farm itself blow up from the inside when a missile hit a weapon deposit, thus triggering a chain reaction.

Meanwhile, Pixy and Iskanda were doing their job, destroying the first wave of Belkan interceptors. Six Fishbeds were not very hard to dispatch. But eight J35 Drakens were a bit harder to shot down. Iskanda had to do numerous hit-and-runs to take down only three of them, when Pixy attacked four others with a volley of XMAAs. Two of them managed to shake off the missiles sent head-on and then retaliated but doing a very tight barrel-roll with his airbrake full extended at the risk of structural failure, Pixy repositioned himself on their ten hours. From this alignment he quickly gunned down one. The other tried to fire a SAAM but Pixy lost it, and after an unsuccessful head on attack against the enemy Draken, he was on his six in no time due to his better maneuverability and sent a pair of missiles to the fighter.

Iskanda, was chased for a few second by the last Draken after downing three of them, which had managed to avoid the first attack and went to her six doing sharp turns. But even in his six, he had not the time to fire his gun before she outrun him in a matter of second, the Ramjet-powered plane going above Mach 2. He tried to launch SAAMs but failed. That's when his alarm blared. One XLAA was closing in. Doing a hairpin turn, he shook it off. But by doing so, he lost track of the Griffon. And when he found it again, it was going at full speed head-on from above. He tilted his plane to fire his missiles, but they had trouble targeting the strange thermal signature of the Griffon for two seconds. And three seconds later a dual burst of gun shattered his cockpit to a thousand pieces of glass, killing him instantly. The aircraft exploded five seconds later.

" Damn, he shook off my XLAA with a Draken! Those Belkan ones are a bit better than the ones Sapins used over Solis Ortus as support." Halo 12 complained, discharging her anger on a line of APC near the second bridge, strafing and shooting missiles on them at a slow pace.

The sixth unit resumed on destroying the few anti-aircraft guns and missiles launchers around the second bridge, using their bombs sparingly. Due to their weapon shortage, they carried only a small numbers of anti-ground armaments, but there was no need to use high yield bombs on APCs. The mission was going well. A bit too well maybe.

15 seconds later, the low sky was shattered by 4 shots. Almost instantly, the first windmill exploded. Then from the second one, who was near the farm the Komyeta squadron had destroyed, came the resistance voice.

" Damn'it, they blew up one of our emitting posts. Can you AWACS track them?"

" This is Eagle Eye; those shots were apparently from ground-to-ground seventy-five-millimeter cannons. We will have their position shortly."

" 75-millimeter cannons? Aren't those things from the 1900's?" Iskanda inquired, not understanding Belkan use of weaponry: how could they use high-tech sixth generation fighters and ballistic cannons nearly one hundred years old?

" They are still very accurate and efficient, and their anti-recoil system is the best ever designed." Valentin explained the technical reason of their use.

A second volley of 75-millimeter shells destroyed the second windmill five second later. When the pilots saw the shockwaves it produces, they were happy it was ground-to-ground only and not usable as Flak.

" Eagle Eye here, we have the 75-millimeter cannons located. Galm 1, you are the fastest here, go and destroy them."

" I'm on it. PC max!" She screamed with her usual sick joy. Battle had taken over her neutral stance she imposed on herself. And those Belkans would discover this the hard way.

" May I remind you your ramjet has no afterburners?" Halo 10 rhetorically pointed out.

" I don't care, I'm always as fast as your name is horrible."

Which, with Halo 10's true name being Ingertrude, was not false. Quickly reaching Mach 2, the Griffon was in no time above the four batteries. There were only 4 canons, with small boxes housing the shells. It would be dealt with haste. Of course, the supersonic interceptor was heard very well by the artillery servants. Belkan operators were no deaf men, even if they would soon meet death.

" Unknown Ustian supersonic incoming. Run for your lives!" The Belkan commander ordered.

" What about air support?" A Belkan sergeant asked.

" Two squadron are coming, and we have a little surprise for those Ustians. But we can already consider those 75-millimeter cannons as lost." A third Belkan voice said. Yet her AWACS could not tell where it was coming from.

Meanwhile, she had already closed the distance between her and the canons. She saw among her path a second farm seized and appropriated as a SAM site and two groups of APCs, tanks and SAMs near the third bridge. On her rudimental radar she could already see the cannons and their weapon deposit.

The soldiers had gathered themselves around the weapon deposit. Some had even pull out some shoulder mounted SAMs. But they never had the time to use them properly: their first salvo was avoided by a small yaw maneuver of the Griffon, and five second later, she began her strafing run. The twin guns sent a deluge of fire among the servants, killing and wounding most of them. She then fired an HVR right on their weapon deposit. It exploded right on impact, obliterating every remaining Belkans in the vicinity.

While she was doing her task, the other were busy too: Pixy and the two F-14Ds kept maintaining aerial supremacy. Galm 2 downed two F-4Es that wanted to aim their SAAMs at the Ustian Gazelles. The twin witches killed a group of five F-5Es who were trying to get in position to fire their QAAMs at Halo 5 and 7, the latter were destroying the SAM site with their last UGLBs and SFFSs, respectively. In the meantime, Komyeta 1 and 2 had the time to shoot their last volleys of rockets on the APCs and tank standing by the third bridge, but couldn't take the SAMs that kept firing at them, as the missiles launchers were well-covered by SPKs.

Yet these four shooting emplacements were giving all pilots a run for their money. And as all were busy, they did not notice a four military trucks column.

" I see smoke at the level of the bridge, Herr Kapitän." The first truck driver of this unit pointed out.

" This is Luchs leader, we have not made all this way from the Sapin front line for nothing. Brace yourselves, we are going through." Their leader ordered with a stern voice.

" Damned Belkans, what are they up to?" Johnson wondered, as the trucks vanished from his radar, hidden by the buildings of the town.

" This is Luchs Unit. We have made through the enemy lines. Prepare the surprise for those Ustians." The leader said as there were entering in the city.

" We are keeping them busy, don't worry... Argh!" One SAM servant was brutally killed. They did not have seen the Griffon which just attacked them, and for a good reason: from the artillery site Iskanda flew back glued to the Aare river. And when she had them in her sight, they were all aiming way higher than her position. Two guns burst were enough to ruin the SPKs at the east of the bridge, and after flying below the bridge, she had to speed up to avoid the fire of the remaining SPKs, but this give Pixy an opportunity to drop his last bomb on them.

Without their anti-missile coverage, the SAMs were dealt quickly. But the surprise of this Luchs Unit was about to be revealed to the sixth unit of Ustio.

 **Aarlon, Sapin, 14/04/1995, 10:35, Weather: light coverage.**

The SA342 Gazelles were just at ten kilometers from the city. It would be liberated soon, and the resistance coup was about to begin. Yet everyone lost his cool when the pilots saw the shape of one kind of missile they knew already too well: the ballistic close-range missile of the BAWS.

" Eagle Eye to all, we have a BAWS launch. Not heading toward the E-767, nor our fighters… What are they aiming at?" Johnson tried to figure where the QAAM-like missile BAWS created were oriented.

" The choppers, aim at their choppers!" A Belkan soldier said, maybe a bit too enthusiastic, revealing their targets.

" This is Jungle 1. Ready for evasive maneuvers." The Ustian leader indicated, even if he knew that, if their fighters had a hard time fighting this thing over Bayes, their survivability was fairly low now.

And he was right. One by one, the Gazelles felt from the sky. The pilots had just the time to jump before the missiles impact them. No human losses but a great material one.

" Gottverdammt, who guided them? Trucks alone are not enough to handle this kind of armament." Pixy asked to the AWACS, which crew were analyzing the shot.

But before they could respond, another BAWS was launched. And if the situation could not get any worse, two squadron of eights F-15Es with a dark grey camo and eights Tornado Gr4 with a camo made of bright horizontal red lines on a brown paintjob came from the Northwest at low altitude.

And of course, the Tornados did not lose time before activating their ECMPs.

The only one who was not hindered by the jamming was Iskanda, as her weaponry did not require lock-on. So, while missiles where falling from up there and all sides, she went straight for a group of five Tornados. Two F-15Es try to prevent her from destroying them, but even with a low mobility fighter she managed to evade their SAAMs by a quick double turn. And right after those turns, she arrived right at the flank of the Gr4s she was initially targeting, a bit above them. Firing three of her five last HVRs, she dispatched four of them, as one was hit by the wreckage. The fifth one was downed by Komyeta 2 XMAA's, who manage to get a lock due to the reduction of ECMs.

" Eagle Eye to all Ustian aircrafts, we have tracked the guiding aircraft for the BAWS. It's a Lindwurm at high altitude."

" This is Galm 1, understood, I'm climbing right now. Spare me some fighters for when i came back, please?" Iskanda decided to go for some high-altitude hunt, as she had the greatest climb rate.

" I cannot guarantee that." Halo 12 responded.

" Me neither." Halo 7 added.

" Damn you, I hope he has the same drone i had to fight last time, it was fun." Galm 1 retorted, as she was already at half the altitude of her target.

" I hope not. You almost end up in a spiral of death, miss Rayien." Koenig warned her, using her name to appear a bit more serious.

" Galm 1, Roger that."

 **Aarlon, Sapin, 14/04/1995, 10:35, Weather: light coverage.**

As Iskanda reached the Bm-335N Lindwurm, she could saw that the fighter squadron that the Belkans had sent was already reduced to a quarter of its initial size, and the four remaining were only surviving due to the BAWS fire that forced the Ustian to break their lock.

However, she wasn't unnoticed, she knew that. But who cares when you can reach Mach 2.8?

" Radar post to commander, the Ustian Griffon his climbing toward us. Only fifteen seconds before we are in range." The Belkan radar operator confirmed the Nachtigall datum.

" That's a shame that a former Belkan prototype will be the one to bury us all." The leader commented.

" Ironic." Iskanda mused, now in position right below the Bm-335N. Then she fired her last two HVRs on him. Both tore through the Nachtigall giant radar and exploded inside, causing a chain reaction that reduced the bomber to smithereens.

" Galm 2, Fox 3!" Pixy said as he engaged head on the last three F-15Es. If one of them survived the volley of XMAAs Pixy fired, his survival wasn't that long. Right after crossing each other's path, he went to his six and kept following him for a bunch of seconds. Despite doing very sharp turns, the Belkan pilot did not succeed in breaking the chase and was gunned to death in the middle of one turn by Galm 2.

" Eagle Eye to resistance, aerial supremacy has been obtained in the area."

" Roger that. Let show to the last Belkan ground forces here the power of the king of Jungle." The resistance leader replied, wishing good luck to the four former civilian pilots who were about to go straight into action.

From her very position at 18 kilometers, she could see what was happening, despite her lack of screens and long-range IR sensors to display the area. The roof of a warehouse opened itself, and from this small gap flew what seems from her position to be big bumblebees. They were two small dual seater choppers, with a thine frame, way thinner than a Hind. The lines of their shape were not curved, but rigid and complexed. If conventional choppers seemed to be like big dragonflies, yet this one was so unnatural in its shape it seemed extraterrestrial. And the dark color was not helping either.

" This is Gavilán (Sparrow hawk) 1, taking off."

" Gavilán 2, taking off. Let's take our city back!" The pilot of the second unknown chopper said.

" Gavilán squadron, you are on the temporary control of the sixth Ustian Unit. Free engagement of the Belkans is authorized." Koenig said, taking control of this new asset.

" Can you specify your aircraft? We have trouble identifying them." Johnson asked, wondering what the designation for those black choppers could be.

" We are flying EC665 Tigers." The Sapin leader responded.

So, Johnson searched for this aircraft in their intel. Apparently, it was the latest prototype of Axe and Hammer, but it wasn't ready to enter service before 2000 in their last report. Maybe the war speeded up a bit the process. It featured an amazing speed for a chopper: 450 km/h. The very low radar signature was explained by the use of a mixture of state-of-the-art ceramic plating and composites. Aarlon had been known for centuries for its ceramics, exporting them around the whole continent, but now they were more used for the new high-tech ceramic than the old traditional ones. If the EC665 did not possess the same strength in firepower than the Apaches, its top-class maneuverability enabled him to even dogfight against slow CAS fighter such as Tucanos if necessary.

The two choppers moved just above the roof level carefully, avoiding the RPGs the Belkans fired at them with ease, before taking out their operators with their accurate reengineered SPK gun.

Still the threat wasn't from those shoulder mounted SAMs, nor from the light gun of the APCs, which they dealt with them quickly using their XAGMs. The threat was elsewhere, and against two stealth choppers were coming two stealth jet: unnoticed due to their low target profile and their dark green two-tone camo, two F-117A Nighthawk of the Belkan Air Force were penetrating the area. Their mission was simple: destroy those new choppers using the few QAAMs they were carrying, and the Ustian facilities here with their GPBs.

Yet those fighters were not invisible to naked eye either, thus, as soon as they closed to the city limit, one scout of the resistance noticed them. He hoped the pilot they put inside the Tigers were good enough, despite being only pilots from an acrobatic civilian team.

" This is surveillance post number Quatros, we have two F-117As incoming. Can you see them?"

" Gavilán 1, I have noticed them. Moving to intercept."

" Eagle Eye to Tigers, will this be OK?" Koenig asked. He had already lost too much choppers pilots today, he did not want to lose any more.

" Even the Griffon would not made in time to intercept them." Johnson commented.

" We are maybe not officials, but those two flying bricks have made the mistake to underestimate us." Gavilán 2 replied, the copilot setting the radar on air-to-air.

" Be ready to fire interception missiles!" The other Tiger warned.

" Roger, Missile for Interception and Counter-Attack on stand-by." He confirmed, before moving toward the F117A head-on.

" Dschungel (Jungle) 1 here, those choppers are heading toward us. Let's take care of them."

" They think they can win this? Quatsch (bullsh*)!" The number two insulted the Sapins.

The number two was the first to engage. He shot two missiles and two QAAMs, but they were all intercepted by the Tiger's MICAs in mid-air. He went for a gun kill, but he noticed something odd: the chopper was turning their back toward him. Maybe they wanted to reduce damage, he thought. But he did not know how much he underestimated those unknown choppers.

As he was getting in gun range, the chopper went straight to the sky, doing a gigantic loop for its size. A bit astonished by the acrobatics this chopper just pulled out, he did not see that the EC-665 was already in his six. SPKs bullets shredded his fighter. To die by the weapon created to protect them from enemy fire was ironic to say the least.

" Leo ! No!" The other pilot screamed as the Nighthawk exploded over the city.

" You cannot run! The Sapin leader said, as he was engaging him. He tried to get a gun kill, but only hit the left aileron. He then switched to MICAs and fired two at him. But this revealed to be useless, as the low thermic signature made the release of flares enough to disrupt the IR sensors of the air-to-air missile.

" You cannot lock me, stupid fly!" The Belkan mocked, as he disrupted another pair of missiles through his flares.

" What about if we set one of our MICAs on electromagnetic lock? the copilot guessed. This has not been heard by anyone else than the pilot.

" Good idea. Try to evade those, sucker!" He said, firing two IR and two EM-guided missiles toward the F117.

" I still have enough flares. And they were your lasts." The Belkan laughed, dumping of more flares. The two IR-locked missiles were disrupted, yet the two others resumed their path.

" Was? Warum funktionierten meine Fackeln nicht mehr? Nicht möööögliiiiiiiiich ! (What? What is wrong with my flares? not possible) " He gasped, worried for the first time of this fight.

He tried every trick to pull out those two missiles, but 30 seconds later, they detonate right under his bomb bay. Two stealth attackers had been destroyed by two stealth choppers. However, if the EC665 was the latest creation in matter of chopper, the F-117A was from the 1970's. It wasn't his time to shine any more.

" Aerial threat removed. Anything remaining to destroy?" The Sapin leader asked.

" There are still some triple As and tanks on the runway of the factory. And i think you do not have enough missiles left to destroy them." The resistance leader commented the state of the remaining Belkans.

Yet, before the aircraft receive any intel or order from the AWACS, two volleys of shell fell right on the area. Their trajectory was almost a linear one, and it did not take long to understand their provenance. In her strafing run, Iskanda had let the 75-millimeter cannons pristine, targeting only their operators. And some small weapon deposit around the area had survived too. But the few Belkan survivors had been overrun by Sapin resistance fighter, using old Sten machine guns conserved in the same war museum the Belkans had taken the 75-millimeter cannons.

" So, are we useless now? Pixy pointed out, as the city was almost liberated by itself.

" We just needed aerial coverage for our operation to begin." The resistance leader explained. Behind him, resistance members were cheering. For once, they had obtained victory. And Osea, this so-called superpower wasn't even involved in it.

" This is the Amiral Koenig of the sixth Ustian Unit, you said in your encrypted message you could send us some supplies?" Koenig asked. Liberating a city was a good thing, however if they do not have the supply to keep it, it would have been pretty useless.

" Of course. We have three brand-new A-400Ms Atlas ready to take off. In fact, like the EC-665s, they were not ready when this war broke out, but now they are." The leader confirmed the intel they sent.

" You are lucky, there has been no snow at Valais for three days, the runway is clean." Fred said. He knew that if it was difficult for a fighter to land, it was undoubtedly way harder for a transport.

" We will survive, do not worry that much for us." One Sapin pilot responded from a taxiing A-400M.

" Well, this operation seems to be a success. Look like luck was on your side again, solo wing." Johnson commented, as the E-767 was slowly turning back to Valais Air Base.

" Whatever, I was getting tired to come home without wings." Pixy replied. Even if he would have preferred to come home without any wing but with Laura.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 14/04/1995, 12:00.**

The back travel was a bit longer, due to the protection needed for the three transport aircrafts. A small Belkan squadron composed of F-16C with a light metallic blue camo tried to intercept them, but the ECMPs of the transports manage to protect them while they were dispatched by the Ustian crafts.

Their landing was quite a calm one, despite the shortness of the runway. Now, all were waiting for Koenig to come in the briefing room for the debriefing. He was a bit busy outside, along with Steller, helping a bit the Sapins to relocate the supply by giving them the needs of each sector and squadron of the base.

He finally came at 12:15, and began the debriefing, with Johnson displaying a map of the operation, which remind them all the events of this mission: the 75-millimeter cannons, the BAWS and the discovery of these new choppers. All were ready to be usable at any time soon. Even the BAWS of the Luchs Unit had been captured, though the unit's members managed to escape the city. But with the combination of these very old and brand-new weapons, Aarlon was no more a defenseless city. Any supply for the Belkan army at the South was now doomed, and the capture of one BAWS launcher could surely help them develop countermeasures for this new threat.

" Passage along route 171 has been secured successfully. The checkpoint of Aarlon is now closed for the Belkans. It's only a matter of time before their units on the Sapin front line will be overrun. Those resistance fighters impressed me with what they manage to create, i will give them this point. Our weapon shortage is no more an issue, but Aarlon will be a key point we will have to protect from Belkans counterattacks."

" Next time, our missions will depend on the current progresses of the Osean and Sapin Navy. Without their logistic and numerical support, we cannot retake our country without serious losses." Johnson added, zooming out on the Osean continent to show the position of the said naval forces: around one thousand kilometers from the Futuro canal, the anchoring point of the Southern Belkan Fleet. They had to retreat this far to be out of range of Belkan anti-ship fighters.

" Did they really have that much casualties?" Iskanda asked. She had not seen the humiliating Osean retreat, after their great losses in Wesson.

" Sapin lost an entire carrier strike group, and Osea lost four among their seven aircraft carrier. But they accelerated the building's pace of their new ones for the counterattack. That's all you need to know yet. Dismiss, pilots." Koenig ended the briefing, looking to the pilot who had gained hope again. If they could hold just a bit longer…

As soon as the pilots get out, they were met with a strange ballet of forklift mounted on caterpillar to prevent them from sliding if the runway was iced. Some were carrying munitions, other aircraft parts, and others simply supply such as fuel barrels and food.

" I hope one of them is carrying composites for my X-29A." Iskanda wished, as they make their way toward the restroom.

" Hope did not win wars, yet those filled with it are often victorious." Pixy commented in his philosopher-like manner.

Little they know, Steller was currently talking about this subject with the Sapin leader of the transport unit. He knew the fixing would be a hard one to do, due to the specification of the X-29A and the little time they had before the next operation.

" So, Carlos, do you find what we need for her?" He asked to a brown-haired forty-years-old Sapin who was reading some supply list.

" Ah yes, those aeroelastic composites. We have brought what was the most fitting for this job, some new generation ceramics. A bit less flexible but had better resilience." He recalled what the engineers back at Aarlon had told him.

" Gut. I think she honestly didn't care if her craft become a bit more unstable. Her mind is as unstable as her plane, it will be kein problem for her." Steller explained, stating that if she could handle the Griffon she could handle anything.

" Besides, I don't see the point of having two active radars on a single seater plane not made for CAS." Carlos pointed out, finding this wish a bit strange.

" Well, she kept the Nord 1500 Griffon in one piece, I can indulge one of her whims." He agreed the idea was strange, but since it was his idea of letting her fly his grandfather's creation, nothing was that strange anyway.

Now, the broken, pierced and almost torn apart X-29A was still resting. To think that she managed to land that wreckage and even dogfight with it was impressive to say the least. But Steller and his men would not have much rest until this metallic sewer was again a functional fighter jet. They had already removed most of the destroyed systems, but almost rebuilding a prototype with very few blueprints and other data was much harder than simply replacing a broken wing from a fighter build in massive series such as the F-15C.

 **Well, one other chapter ended.**

 **Like i have said at the beginning, I'm changing the Belkan war. Here it's only incremental changes, but soon the real change will begin...**

 **Feel free to review, favorize, follow... I accept all critics as long as they are constructive ones (and if my English is not perfect, sorry too)**

 **06/06/19: little grammatical corrections, and I change the name of Ruchs to Luchs (lynx/bobcat).**

 **07/01/20: some minor fixing.**


	6. Chapter 3: Operation Choker One

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 20/04/1995, 9:00, Weather: Little cloud coverage, low risk of snow.**

Iskanda was a bit frustrated. Since almost a week she knew they were working on her X-29A and they had not authorized her to see it. How did she know? Well, fixing, melting and welding composites and ceramics had quite a different flagrance than the one you would obtain by melting and welding metals and alloys such as Duraluminium. She could even hear the noise of the sewing tools, along with the sparks they produced. She was now wondering if they would succeed or not. But a knock on the door of the room she was still sharing with Pixy attracted her attention, while she was reading some scientific magazine about the fall of Ulysses. Mens had already shattered the earth with their boundaries and their wars for centuries, and now space itself wanted to play a bit in the shattering game.

" Frau Rayien, Herr Steller fragt ihnen (Lady Rayien, Herr Steller is asking for you)." A young maintenance worker was standing in the open door. He seemed exhausted but satisfied.

Reading his identification card, she responded quickly:

" Arnold Razner, I am coming right now." She closed her magazine and put it in a drawer of the little cabinet they gave her to put her stuff in. Of all the solution to reduce the damage, none was deemed to be successful : it was very hard to launch shells or cruise missiles to destroy such small fragments, and the gravity of mars, the Moon and the earth made calculation truly hard. The most viable approach was the Emmerian one: protect the people through giant shelters and give up the cities we could not protect.

" So, is my plane fixed?" She asked as they made their way to the hangar.

" Well, I let Herr Steller judge that." He said, scratching the back of his head, a bit embarrassed not to be able to respond yet.

At her hangar, the smell of burned metals and alloys greeted her. At least, the X-29A was no more a metallic sewer. But there were dramatic changes to the paintjob of the plane: the nose, the forward-swept wings, the back ailerons and the canards were now in a very dark color. They even seemed to absorb light. The belly radar she ordered had been mounted and was also covered by a dark plating. The central fuselage, on the other hand, was not that changed: they kept the traditional paint job of the X-29A: a large dark blue line surrounded by two red line. But the red was a bit darker than usual, almost a bit bloody. While she turned around the plane, she could see that the airbrake behind the cockpit had been replaced by this dark matter. And strangely, the craft had now a twin exhaust port. Steller seemed to be smiling as he was watching the plane too. Even if Iskanda was not a very extrovert kind of person, she decided to show her happiness to him.

" Let me go, I'm a married man." He complained when the merc hugged him.

" Damn, I will have to watch for a jealous wife and the Belkans in the sky now." She took this new threat with humor.

" You should not laugh about it." Steller said while she was rubbing her hand around the strange black matter. It wasn't cold as alloys are. " My wife is the chief cook of the base. If you do not want to have nothing but water and dry bread you should not mess with my work."

" Got it, but what composites did you use to obtain that color?"

" It's a mixture of graphene and new generation ceramics. Less flexible but a bit more resistant to aerodynamic torsion there're on those forward-swept wings. Besides, it adds some stealth to your plane." He repeated a bit was the Sapins explained to him last week.

" And about the avionics I asked, everything is OK?" She tried to process the few change to the former state of her craft - before it was reduced to a sewer-.

" The belly radar is in place, we even put a small screen just above the firing switches to help the lock-on through this one. The twin guns have now an electrical firing system which should reduce the time of reaction, and you can fit all the standard ordnance on your plane: QAAMs, FAEBs or LAGMs." Steller described the few changes they made. He did not have the time to ask her why she wanted a second radar, as the speakers of the base screamed the second after, asking for all flying personals to come for briefing.

 **Briefing room of Valais Air Base, Ustio, 20/04/1995.**

" Since our Erusean Kamerad is finally here, we can begin the briefing. We have received multiple tasks from the chain of command." Koenig began the briefing, as the Axe and Hammer mapping system was getting online.

" The first one is to help the escort of the third fleet against a little Belkan naval strike force. This will be for our carrier-based aircraft only, due to the distance between Valais and the Osean third fleet. You will receive more information once you will be there." The map showed the Osean fleet, which was still waiting for a new carrier to advance. The few that were there, the Buzzard, the Vulture and the Evanessor were almost depleted of their fighters, but still had an impressive naval defense of twelve frigates, ten destroyers, eight cruisers, six Aegis-class and four nuclear-powered attack submarines.

" Aren't your Sea Flankers made for carrier pads only?" Viviane pointed out the difference of carrier-based compatibility.

" The originals are. But the mechanics have already put the necessary systems for your airplanes to be compatible with the Osean carriers. Also, kein problem." Koenig replied.

" You can count on us, Sir." Valentin Kovsky said first, being the senior pilot in the team. The four concerned pilot then headed outside the room, knowing their travel was going to be a tough one: Belka would surely try to intercept them.

" Halo 5 and 7, your airplanes are not carrier compatible, and for this reason you will help protect the Gavilàn squadron while they strike the Belkan-Sapin front line at the south west of Aarlon." Kœnig resumed the briefing.

The screen then showed a portion of the Aare river at the south of the route 171, but this time the river was more on a East-West vector. This allowed the Belkans to create a long line of defense against aerial and ground threats. They had even moved a few ships through a nearby canal, and the surviving CAS fighter of Sapin were no use again Belkan new Aegis class, equipped with two bays of BAWS, one at the stern and one at the bow, each protected by three SPKs and two AA guns. And those one had also been equipped with modernized dual barrel 75-millimeter cannons, capable of firing conventional shells or rockets able to lock on to ground targets and choppers. The Belkans have renamed them TAS for TempestAngreiffSchiffe. The name spoke by itself: they were able to bring by themselves a tempest of fire.

" Hopefully this time we will have all our ground ammo. We will need it." Halo 5 pointed out. 16 UGLBs and 14 SFFSs would not be enough to destroy the three Aegis vessel in the area and the ground troops. But Sapin forces were not thin either: they had the EC665 that could carry some LAGMs instead of their standard XAGMs. And the Espada and Picador team would be sent as their aerial cover.

" It's a joint operation. We do not know every details of the disposition of the Belkans forces there yet, so you will receive information from the Sapin forces. Work with them and the route 171 will finally connect Aarlon with the south of Sapin." Johnson said, as the numbers of the Belkans forces there were only obtained through Oseans satellites that were not perfect.

" Do not worry, Commander. We will make Ustio proud." Halo 7 said as they went out of the briefing room.

" And, what do we have left?" Iskanda asked, fully aware than her X-29A was not carrier capable either.

" Well, the chief of command has ordered you to do some scouting along the former border between Ustio and Belka. You will be monitoring area B7R, which is currently under Belkan control. The area is subject to magnetic interference due to the magnetic geology of this place. A strong Belkan resistance is expected there. Free engagement of Belkans is authorized on sight." Koenig described what many would have considered as a suicidal mission: two plane going against the defensive forces composed of four F-4Es, four MiG-21s, and four F-20As Tigersharks.

" This is promised to be fun." Iskanda gauged, saluting the admiral before leaving the briefing room. Today, she was going to take her X-29A back to the sky. And she was going to need some blood to baptize it a second time…

" So, they finally fixed it?" Pixy guessed, as they went to the hangar. The Griffon has been removed since a week, but during the briefing, the X-29A replaced it, moved from the fixing hangar to theirs.

" Yes. I will just take QAAMs for today, as it's an air-to-air mission only." She said to the maintenance crews, who fastened the said missiles with the standard ones.

" Do not forget the Electronic Pulse Missile, in case we met those forward swept-wing fighters with thermobaric ordnance." Pixy said as he climbed in his F-15C. He had always chosen a mixt of XMAAs and QAAMs, taking eight of the first and six of the second, while her X-29A could only carry six QAAMs with the EPMs.

" I think if we could use them in great number it would be even funnier, but our own aircrafts are not emp-proof, Schade." She commented as she climbed into her fighter.

One minute later, they were both taxiing on the runway, the new engine of the X-29A not making her as fast as the Griffon, it would have been miraculous, but they still could push the plane to around two thousand kilometers per hour.

" Galm 1, Galm 2, altitude restriction cancelled, kept your path on the bearing 330 toward B7R. Good luck up there." Henri wished them as they slowly faded out of Valais Air Base's radars.

 **Front line on the Aare river, three hundred kilometers South-West of Aarlon, 20/04/1995, 10:30, Weather: little drizzle.**

" This is Halo 5, Gavilàn, Espada and Picador squadron, are you here?" Fred asked from his F-15C.

" Got one AWACS around here?" Francis followed, used to their aerial guidance and ability to prevent or at least to diminish the likelihood of surprise air attack by low flying fighters or stealth.

" This is Espada 2, on my way to provide aerial supremacy for the Ustians. Our ground forces have already engaged with the Belkans forces, but we will need your support to destroy their heavy howitzers and their TAS. And no, our last AWACS was destroyed by the new Belkan anti-air system." One female Sapin voice said from a Rafale paint with yellow and red lines. A J35 Draken was flying nearby with the same camo. Maybe Espada 1. The Espada insignia was a bull pierce by a foil and a dagger, surrounded by flames, with the name of the squadron written in gothic-like white letters. Their squad number was the nine air and Land fighter squadron, 11th tactical fighter squadron. The Picador squadron was 4 grey F-16Cs, known for their great gun accuracy. Their symbol was a target pierce by throwing knives.

" Roger, we can do without it. Beginning joint operation now." Halo five said while diving toward an heavy howitzer. They were more of a giant cannon than anything else. Each of the foot of each cannons was as big as a tank, and the barrel was maybe more than two hundred millimeter in diameter. They were four on the Belkan side of the river, each surrounded by AA guns on their support and on self-propelled vehicles. SAMs opened fire as soon as they saw the Eagles beginning their dive, but it was too late, as two SFFSs of the Strike Eagle had already been dropped.

Sliced by the cloud of shrapnels, the defenses of the howitzer were terminated by the Sapin standard missiles, opening a path for the Ustians. Fred dropped one bomb on each, and then they fired their standard missiles and guns too. The bombs themselves were not enough to destroy the units, but the dents they created in their armor were enough to allow their missiles to trigger inside chain reactions which destroyed the cannons.

But the two next seemed to take this new threat with a bit more care: they had deploy small SPKs. Francis tried to take them with his SFFSs, but the great number of cannons allowed the Belkans to intercept enough shrapnels to prevent the howitzer destruction.

" Damned, does your Rafale come with any SODs or LASMs?" Halo 5 asked to Espada 2.

" Espada 2 to Halo 5, sorry, I am on full air-to-air, I have only XMAAs today." She replied, a bit sorry.

" This is Gavilàn 1. We have LAGMs. Just sent them some missile saturation attack and our strike should be successful." The leader of the EC665s indicated.

" Roger. Beginning saturation attack now!" Espada 1 ordered.

The eight planes quickly regroup themselves in a tight formation, before diving toward the SPKs. Of course, only a few missiles went through the Belkan wall of fire while some bullet hit them. The Ustians did not suffer that much, but Picador 4 was out of commission. But thanks to this distraction, four long range air-to-ground missiles were fired without further notice by the EC665. And their speed made their interception nearly impossible. Only one of them explode in mid-air, and the three other sent shockwaves to the entire area. And the following shockwaves which resulted of the howitzer's destruction finished the few ground-to-air defenses.

Deprived of their aerial support, the few remaining tanks on the Belkan side were quickly bombed by the Ustians, while the APCs and light howitzer were gunned by the Sapins. Picador 4 had successfully retired from the engagement zone. Some Sukhoi 32 Strike Flanker try to sneak through the two aerial units, but the XMAAs of the Rafale and F-16Cs stopped them before they could do any damage to the Sapin ground forces. Yet the Sapins could not go through the bridge: their surface artillery managed to cause some damage to the lighter ships, but the Belkan Aegis were still untouched. They were preventing any tentative of crossing the bridge, as their surface artillery was enough to reduce any Sapin tanks or APC to dust.

" Damned it, does your EC665 have more LAGMs?" Francis asked, as he was avoiding one missile sent by the BAWS.

" No, we have not a very large capacity. But we have some surprise coming for those Aegis." Gavilàn 1 responded. It was just an idea on how to use the 75-millimeter cannons they captured last week, but it could work.

" Roger, Gavilàn. But there are some Belkan fighter incoming, we will have to deal with them first." Espada 1 added, as his radar was showing the Belkan incoming threat: ten F-15Es to deal with the Sapin ground forces, four EA-18Gs Growler for electronic coverage, seven Migalev 29As Fulcrum and eight F-14Ds to regain aerial superiority.

" We have them outnumbered." One Belkan leader said.

" Do not get overconfident. Are the lesson taught by the failures of the Ragnarök and Dschungel squadron not enough?" The leader of the two-tone grey camo Strike Eagle replied.

" Ver. Engaging." The Belkan pilots responded one by one.

" What does this " Ver " even mean?" Picador 3 asked, chasing two F-15Es while avoiding a XMAA from one of the Growlers.

" It's the short term for Verstanden, understand, signor." Halo 7 translated from the Belkan he learned back in Gymnasium.

" Thanks." Picador 3 finished the conversation while firing a pair of XMAAs on the Strike Eagles. One did evade the attack, but they were less mobile than the small F-16C. The little fighter did not take that long to get into firing position, while dodging the fire from two Fulcrum on his fourth and seventh hours.

" I have been punctured. Main engine failure." The Belkan pilot said right before bailing out.

" One by one, they are falling. Fox 3." The female voice of Espada 2 said as she fired her own XMAAs on the Fulcrums, saving Picador 3 some time.

" Increase ECM at level four." The Belkan leader of the jamming aircraft said.

" Ver, Increasing ECM." His wingmen replied. Now the HUD of the allied forces - Sapins and Ustians - was truly becoming crazy. They radar showed nothing but grey.

" Madre de Dios, shot those ECM craft." Picador 2 swore, while avoiding a SAAM from a Strike Eagle.

" I have one in my sight." Espada 2 said, her highly mobile Rafale slowly outmaneuvering the Prowler. But the Belkans pilots had not let their last card: while the copilot dumped flares to disrupt the IR lock, the pilot accelerated, outrunning for some seconds the Rafale which had lost speed to dogfight properly. The Sapin female ace then speed up to catch up with him, and she was joining then quickly. Yet, as she was slowing a little bit to aim her gun at their EA-18G, the Belkan craft pulled out a Pugachev's Cobra at the last moment, avoiding by sheer luck the gunfire.

" Stay with your little dances and let flying to traue menschen, Fraulein !" The Belkan pilot said as he leveled his aircraft right on hers, right before firing his gun. The left missile launcher of the Rafale was disabled, but she could still fight. And she was not going to play nice after this mockery.

" Prepare to die, Estupido Belkan!" She lashed out of anger and hit the afterburners. She outrun them in a matter of seconds, as post-stall maneuvers depleted greatly the speed of the aircraft. She was quickly out of gun range for her followers, but she was not fleeing, only waiting for the moment to strike. Doing a Split-S, she was in the perfect position for a head-on XMAA launch. The Prowler did attack too, but she manage to lose their tracking by inverting her Rafale and diving inverted, while the much sturdier EA-18G was not so lucky and was hit just below the engine, as he tried to climb to lose the missile. The pilot managed to keep the plane stable, but not for long: his destroyed afterburners could not outrun the Sapin craft for long, and soon a 30-millimeter burst sent the engines and the craft itself ablaze.

" Jeez, I already know that Belkan, Ustian and Erusean woman were not someone to be tempered with, but it seemed that we could include Sapins to the list." Halo 5 said, as he was downing another EA-18G with his gun and a F-14D with a pair of standard missiles, which had tried to attack him from his two hours, but it was without taking account the large angle of lock of his F-15C.

" How do you know about Erusean ones, Ustian?" Picador 2 asked while downing a F-14D that tried to make him overshoot by opening its wing, but the F-16C decelerated too, and managed to gun the left wing while it was opening. With the asymmetrical aerial surface, the Belkan F-14D become very unstable, and a single burst on its engine was enough to make it enter a spiral of death toward the ground.

" Well, our last arrived merc is an Erusean female pilot. Great one, a bit crazy and reckless but can fly anything against anyone." Halo 7 described Galm 1.

" This description is good. Maybe I hope we will meet her above the Canal Futuro. I mean, we will surely attack this place, it's the only way in for the naval forces." Espada 2 added while downing the two-last jammer by a combination of gun burst and standard IR-guided missiles.

" Gott Verdammt, we have lost the ECM!" A Belkan cursed, as the allied radar became green again.

" Finally, some fair game." Picador 1 said, before modifying the weapon restriction of his wingmen. " Free fire of Fox 3s, guys."

" Espada 2, Fox 3." The Rafale fired a volley of XMAAs toward the remaining F-14Ds. The ones of the Picador squadron targeted the F-15Es. But the MiG-29As were still numerous and the Aegis vessel had launched their AH-64s, who were beginning to target the Sapin fighters with their air-to-air missiles.

Yet they did not have seen on their radar the low profile of the EC665 who flew right on their six. The nine Belkan choppers were forced to scatter to avoid collision when four of them burst in flames. Three headed back toward the Aegis to obtain cover fire, while two stayed to fight the Gavilàn squadron.

" We are more mobile than them, leader. We can win this." Gavilàn 2 said, as he did a loop to avoid an air-to-air missile, and quickly rotate after his maneuver to fire his gun on the Belkan craft.

" I agree. Target down." The number one said after getting on the six of the Belkan AH-64 by a series of sharp turns. In the meantime, all remaining MiG-29s were down by the allied fighters, either gunned or shot down by long range missile as they tried to retreat.

" How about your surprise for the TempestAngreiffSchiffe?" Halo 7 asked, as he was trying with his brother and Espada 1 to take the SPKs of one but succeeded only in taking two cannons while all three planes suffered nasty hits.

" The EC865 Anacondas have already made their delivery. Let use the power of the past again their creators." Gavilàn 1 cryptically said.

" What are the EC865s?" Picador 1 asked, only to receive like all the allies a quick description of those craft: they had the twin rotor like conventional transport chopper, but with the stealth frame looking a bit like the Tiger. But their front cockpit was an elongated one, looking like the front of some very high-speed train, to maximize air flow. Yet if the overall shape of the craft was a bit like these high speed trains they copied the aerodynamic design from, the sides were not very smooth, but irregular, curved into some vertical wave manner, which make the black ceramics looked like some black snake skin. Still, they weren't just simple transport either, as two rocket pods revealed in a concealed front bay, along with two gun pods on each side housing a SPK, giving them a bit of cover against shoulder-mounted SAMs. Successful reengineering of Belkan technology would be Belka's downfall someday, Fred thought, as he saw these new generation choppers.

And what they had delivered did not stay a mystery for long either. The chopper had just landed for some dozens of seconds and seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

" You may fire when ready, Renegado 1" Gavilàn 2 ordered.

" Ver. Firing now." Renegado 1 said. From three areas just behind each Belkan Aegis came a first volley of 75-millimeter shells, quickly followed by other numerous volleys, as the anti-recoil system of this old canon allowed a very high firing rate.

" Was passiert? Gib mir eine Schadenmeldung." (Give me a damage report) A Belkan captain shouted to his servants as the ship he commended tilted under the fire. Indeed, the three Aegis were oriented with the surface weaponry toward the Sapins forces, not the other way. So they were pretty much defenseless against those 75 millimeter cannons.

" Es ist nicht gut. SPKs sind nicht mehr verfügbar!" (SPKs are no longer online) A servant screamed in terror as the shockwaves had disabled the cannons, leaving the BAWS bays vulnerable to aerial attacks.

" Schließt (close) the BAWS Bays! Now!" A Belkan captain ordered, but the damage was already done.

" Was wartest du daran, (What are you waiting for) Karl, Schließt die BAWS?" A Belkan lieutenant said to a artillery servants, who was trying desperately to close the bays.

" Das Konsole funktioniert nicht mehr (it does not work anymore). Gott Verdammt!" The Belkan servants cursed. But as all those Belkan were cursing and complaining, the Ustians and Sapin squadron attacked the vulnerable Aegis.

Halo 5 and 7 attack the middle one, the Espada squadron the one to the East and the Picador squadron the one at the West of the battlefield. The Ustian crafts dive cautiously toward the BAWS, making sure than at least one of their bombs explode inside. For the Espada team, they dive from an almost vertical angle of attack, and fire everything in the bays, even their remaining SAAMs and XMAAs. The warheads were not armed, but they still detonated on impact.

But the Picador squadron was met with further resistance: one missile boat had survived the initial onslaught and manage to hit hard Picador 3 and make the two other turn away. He could not move that much from his projected bombing run, and the few AA guns still alive on the Aegis hit him again as he tried to flee.

" Sorry guys. May Sancta Victoria welcome me and look on you." Picador three solemnly said, before aiming his F-16C on the BAWS Bays. The impact was terrific, it nearly cut the Aegis in half.

" Ah, Madre de Dios. Until the end he will have remained a believer." Espada 1 commented the action of Picador 3 as the Aegis were all burning.

" He fell as a warrior. He would not have like to be considered as a martyr." Picador 1 added, a bit more compassionate than the other Sapin leader.

Even if the Picador squadron had suffered two losses, the Belkan line of defense was only burning ships, burning barrels and retreating tanks which were currently attacked by all the ground forces of Sapin : a few Gazelles had joined the Gavilàn squadron and were enjoying the chase, as the Belkan forces were pinned down by the precise shots of their new artillery forces, composed of twelve 75 millimeter cannons - they had produced eight pieces since last week, along with the four EC865 needed to transport them.

" This is the Commandant Weeker aboard the Kestrel. Thanks for pinning those Belkan fighters and Aegis here. The naval forces have well advanced." An Osean voiced said over the waves.

" So, we were just decoys? Damn weak Oseans." Halo 5 swore, as he was turning back to Valais Air Base with his brother, after saying his respect for the fallen Sapins. He was a bit bitter that this operation was just a mere distraction, but sometimes war were not just heroic frontal charges.

" I hope we won't meet any of those new Aegis vessels in Canal Futuro, or it could be our caìda (doom)." Espada 2 wished, as they were going back to their respective Air Base in Sapin.

 **Thirty kilometers at the South East of B7R, Ustio, 20/04/1995, 11:15, Weather: Thick cloud coverage, little chance of rain**

They had flown at a relatively low speed, in order to reduce the probability of being heard by soldiers on ground or even a lone patrolling chopper, as they were flying at low altitude below the cloud coverage. The Belkan AWACS could not see them and they were low enough to avoid ground radar, but the AA artillery servants were not deaf: any plane was still noisy. So, they had to fly in subsonic, to reduce their profile even more.

" So, how is this famous area B7R?" Galm 1 asked to her wingmen, as they were getting closer to said area.

" Belkan priority one area B7R, also known as the round table. This antediluvian impact crater was a great site for Belkan DACT until the war broke out. You could engage everyone in the vicinity without consequences, even between Belkan mercs and Belkan officials. Officials who manage to stay alive were rewarded as honorably knight, they even had some little ceremony on the ground." Pixy began to describe the sector, which caused a bit of nostalgia to come to his mind.

" And mercs cannot have the title I suppose?"

" Nope. For us there's only one ultimate rule: to survive. Yet if you were hurt enough but manage to retreat safely it was still counted as a victory."

" This is going to be fun. The two of us against the whole Belkan Air Force." She maniacally laughed, before hitting the burners to arrive first in B7R.

 **Area B7R, Ustio, 20/04/1995, 11:20, Weather: high stratus.**

" Damned, what is wrong with my compass? It can't stop turning!" Iskanda said, thinking that everything has been fixed on her craft.

" That's normal, Galm 1. Magnetic raw materials made this kind of navigation system useless around here. But you can still deduce direction from sun and times." The AWACS explained.

" And for this same reason electromagnetic locked missiles can be fooled very easily when flying close to the ground." Pixy added.

" Roger that." She acknowledged this strange physical fact.

However, even below one kilometer, they were soon discovered by the squadron of for dark grey F-4Es at the South East of B7R. The Fishbed were patrolling the South-West, and the Tigersharks the East-Southeast.

" What is wrong with the IFF? I only see two aircraft on radar." One Belkan said, almost frustrated that the allied forces sent such a few forces.

" They know nothing about the round table. Let teach them the respect of Belkan propriety first." Another Belkan pilot said.

The four F-4Es hit the burners and went straight head-on toward the Galm team. They fired their SAAMs as soon as they were in range, but the F-15C and the X-29A evaded them with ease, before resuming their own head-on attack. In perfect synchronization, Pixy and Iskanda downed two on the center of the formation, before extending their air brakes and going for a gun kill on the two external Ghosts. Pixy manage to get his first as he was way faster than his opponent, while Iskanda had to chase her opponent a bit. Still, her craft rendered even more unstable by the new materials turn like he did not take into account air resistance, and she outmaneuvered the Belkan craft in seconds before pulling the trigger. The F-4E exploded as she fired her twin guns at his engine.

" Verdammt mercs." A Belkan piloting a Fishbed swore as he saw the demise of his comrades.

" Pixy, you take the MiG 21s, I am on the Tigersharks. I am a little hungry today, and I think a aileron shark soup will be nice to eat." She ordered to her wingmen, trying to diffuse her lust of blood through a bit of humor.

" As you wish, Frau Deadpool." He followed the order, going right on the twelve of those Fishbed. His fight was a short one: he dispatched one craft with his gun and one with a pair of missiles, and then inverted his fighter to launch a pair of QAAMs. In this position, they were a bit faster, he had noticed that since a long time. Why was a question to asked to Thesermeister maybe. But it was efficient despite the little temporarily headache it created, as his four opponents were downed.

Her flight was a bit more unstable, yet with some kind of artistic-like manners. She went straight for the F-20As, evading their missiles by tilting her aircraft and flying with a ninety-degree angle relative to horizon. One or two times, they tried to shoot her down with their SAAMs but she managed to evade their fire. The missile alert was red all the time, as the stall one too, but she closed the gap, nevertheless. She then avoided a pair of two standards missiles sent by one at the center right of their formation, and as she was oriented on the one hour of the Belkan she fired her guns at him. She dealt with the second the same way. And before the two others could fire their SAAMs again, she had dived toward the ground. One of the Tigershark was beginning to tilt toward her when she inverted her flight path and climb at high speed toward him. He did fire a pair of missiles, but she barrel-rolled while climbing and the salvo was avoided. She gunned him quickly before resuming her climb, going beyond the altitudes of the last F-20A. He tried to run by hitting the afterburners, but it was time for her to show the use of having a second radar below her plane : as she climbed vertically, the belly radar was facing and locked on the last F-20A. And while leveling her plane she fired a QAAM. The missile climbed a bit before going right on the Belkan craft in a parabolic maneuver.

"Teufel, how did she lock onto me? Her radar was pointing toward the sky, not meeeee." The Belkan pilot screamed in horror as he saw the missile closing the distance.

" Galm 2 for Galm 1, there're incoming foes. No ace but three Tornadoes, four F16XL and three X-29A." Her wingmen warned her, as this little squadron broke through the former Ustian border of B7R.

" I'm on the X-29As, free engagement for you." She said, going straight for the three forward swept-wing fighters.

" Roger. Good luck." He wished her. He did not fight that much forward swept-wing fighters, but he knew they could outmaneuver any fighter if handed properly. Even dogfighters such as the Typhoon and the F-14 were underdogs compared to these. So, his first choice was the Gr4s. A volley of SAAMs fired by the F-16XL flew toward him, but he fooled them by diving toward the ground. When climbing, he made sure he did not break the limit of the Ustian B7R and went toward the Tornados at full speed. Two of them fell to a combination of missile and gunfire, and the third went down with a XMAA, as he tried to flee outside the engagement zone but was too slow to outrun the missile.

While he dispatched these three CAS planes, she was going full head-on on the X-29As. Again, she managed to evade the fire of her enemies and retaliated by a pair of missiles and QAAMs, locking successfully the three Belkan craft. Yet they also managed to evade her fire. She then set her aircraft for a dive below the one in the middle of the enemy formation. He tried to gun her head-on but as she was below him, he missed, but only by mere centimeters. Extending her airbrakes at full speed, she decelerated very quickly. She almost entered in a stall, but as she was reaching the stalling point, she pulled as hard as she could. Her plane almost rotated on the pitch axis, and she was very quickly on the six of the Belkan craft but went into redout for a few seconds as she inverted her aircraft back to horizontal. If this maneuver was painful, it offered the advantage of being in a very short time in the six of an enemy after a missed head-on. The Belkan had no time to react before she gunned him down. The two others instantly spread out.

" Gottverdammt, this merc know how to handle a X-29A, i have to give her that." One of the Belkans acknowledged.

" Mein Lieber, flattery will get you nowhere. But thanks anyway." Iskanda replied, a bit surprised that Belkan were respecting her despite her being their foe.

" Schmetterling Manöver! Jetzt!" The other Belkan X-29A pilot said, as they had the advantage of speed for a few seconds, as she had depleted greatly her speed while doing her head-to-tail-like maneuver.

" I wonder that they mean by butterfly maneuver?" Iskanda mentally asked herself, as the two Belkan spread into two opposite direction. She was willing to follow one, but at the same time her radar blared: an enemy F-16XL had locked onto her at close range. It must have come while she was getting out of her redsight.

As she swept from side to side, but still following a linear pattern, she finally understood what they meant by a ''butterfly'' maneuver. The two of them had made a horizontal loop toward her, and were currently coming right on her three and nine hours respectively. The path their afterburners had drawn in the sky look like the wing of a butterfly. And now she had four missiles and four QAAMs lock onto her. She knew she could just outrun the IR tracking of the standard, but not the QAAMs. Those missiles were too fast and too nimble to be disrupted that easily.

So, she decided to do the only maneuver that put her back in safe zone, the same than less than a minute before. This caught the F-16XL's pilot out guard, as he did not see her doing that, not like the X-29As pilot who let a little sigh of fatigue, as they had to break their attack to evade being hit by the lost missiles. "Where had she learned this crazy maneuver?" The X-29A Belkan pilot mused, wondering who could be crazy enough to try this maneuver in the first place.

She was now heading straight toward the F-16XL, who immediately fired a pair of missiles, but she dived without even having the time to invert back her plane. But in this situation, her ''belly radar'' was toward the Falcon. And three second later one of her QAAMs was locked and aimed at the Belkan craft. The high velocity missile struck him right below the delta wing, and the craft exploded a few seconds later.

" Gottverdammt, how does she lock onto him? Ich verstehe nichts?" A Belkan F-16XL pilot said, as he has only seen the scene on his radar.

" Nichts ist was du wirst." (Nothing is what you're going to become.) Pixy replied, firing a final volley of XMAAs toward the F-16XLs. Two of them hit their target, while the fourth Belkan craft managed to evade a direct hit: only the tip of his left wing was blown up. Yet the inflicted damage was enough to diminish the mobility of the plane, and Pixy gunned him down quickly.

Meanwhile, Iskanda quickly handled the last two X-29As. One of them had dived to follow her, but as she dived sooner, she had more speed to move, and when he was just arriving at gun range, she hit the burners, doing a horizontal loop toward him. He did hit the burners to outrun her too, but this was too late, this due to the new dual exhaust engine of Iskanda's X-29A: a dual burst of gun tore his single engine apart. The second did not the same mistake and fired from the farthest range possible a pair of QAAM. Powered by a solid propellant motor, the missile quickly closed the gap between the two craft, reaching a Mach 2 velocity. The two projectiles were closing on her quickly. Too quick to be just evaded. So, she decided to forget safety - since when does she take safety into account? and fire two of her QAAMs on his: the four missiles collide with each other as the Belkan QAAMs were doing a U-turn toward her. She had only two of her QAAMs left, but she had suppressed this threat

" Verdammte!" He swore while firing a pair of standard missiles, which she evaded by a double turn.

" Well it's you who's gonna be damned, Dummkopf!" She retorted, and while tilting her aircraft with a ninety-degree angle relative to the horizon, she almost turned on herself. She then headed on straight toward the last X-29A. And fired her gun as she passed just below him to evade his gunfire. The burst destroyed his left front air intake, and the next second he was engulfed in flames.

" This is Eagle Eye, the last defensive Belkan aircraft is down. Galm team, penetrate B7R." Johnson said, calmly. But he knew Belka wasn't going to let this violation stay unpunished.

" That's weird, this order. For a woman I mean." Iskanda sarcastically commented this order.

" I do not imagine you as a dominant woman, but you have strange hobbies, Frau Deadpool." Pixy said, almost laughing, but he lost his funny attitude when he saw on the long-range radar fighters incoming.

" Pixy, I know I am your flight lead now, but i do not want a report of your love affairs with your previous leader." Iskanda snapped back, and the following ''funny'' conversation was cut off some lines later by the AWACS.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 20/04/1995, 11:30, Weather: high stratus.**

" This is AWACS Eagle Eye. Bogeys closing on B7R. Probably the main force." Johnson interrupted them.

" Retreat is not an option, Galm team." Koenig warned, as the two were violating the naos of Belkan airspace.

" Don't worry, Professor Chen, I will follow your rules." Iskanda replied, hitting the burners.

" I'm sure you were going to say this. This is gonna cost you extra!" Pixy said, hurtling toward the Belkan reinforcements.

Four EF-2000 Typhoon were hurtling toward the airspace, but with an opposite direction. They all had a bright red paint job, removing the little stealth capacities those aircraft possessed. But usually, the one who recognized this squadron would flee, this was enough reason for this highly colored camo. Yet these mercs, who had surely recognized them, did not flee. And they had destroyed all the defensive squadron with relative ease. The four squadron members were cautious, but never afraid: they were aces of the Belkan Air Force, not some scared Frischling. Their squadron emblem was a red and white hawk surrounded by two pairs of red stars, on top of some medieval-like blazon with the Belkan colors and a stylized hawk, and written on a medieval banner, the word "Stolz" -Pride-. The picture in a black and grey circle, with the number of their squadron: 52nd tactical fighter squadron.

" Time to hunt some wild dogs." Their leader, Rot 1 said, while locking on the F-15C. Locking on the other craft did take some time, but this could be justified by the lower altitude of it which augmented magnetic interference.

" These are Typhoons. Watch out, they are known for their long-range capacities." Pixy warned her leader, but now she was no longer focused on her wingmen's speech, but on her foe's.

" Fleischer, it's your name?" She asked just to be sure of the pun she was going to throw.

" Ja, aber wie eine …" He began his response but was cut by Iskanda. How could this low-level she-merc know his name?

" Du hieltst mir für ein Hund! Aber wir sind Wolfen. Und Wolfen ernähren von Rohfleisch, Fleischer (You take us for dog. But we are wolves. And wolves feed on raw flesh)! Your squadron will be enough after this little aileron soup." She roared at him, now fully mad of his insult.

Pixy had only seen her in this state once, when she talked about the almost-matricide she had committed and knew she was something to fear when in this state. ''Rot 1, du irrst so viel heute (you missed big time today),'' He mused in Belkan, staying a bit behind, ready to cover her but not wanting to be hit by some stray bullet she could fire out of anger.

" I am supposed to be scared? Fox 3" Rot 1 reluctantly asked, firing a entire volley of XLAAs on her small fighter.

" Du sollst," She replied in Belkan while evading the poorly locked missiles due to the low altitude magnetic interference, smiling mischievously as the four missiles slammed into the ground.

" I agree, you should." Pixy added, trying to warn his compatriot of his now inevitable fate.

Another volley of XLAAs followed but again she evaded them with ease. But after evading them she was now in range for her air-to-air ordnance. She went head-on for the four-plane formation and launched two missiles on Rot 4. He tried to flee but the missiles impacted just below his exhaust, and he was down.

As she crossed path with the Belkan squadron, she instantly made a quick U-turn. The leader accelerated to engage Galm 2, leaving his two wingmen against Galm 1. And they pulled a quick Himmelman, attacking her from her ten and two hours.

" Rot zwei, Fox 3!" He fired an XLAA volley, followed by his comrade. But the two attacks failed, when Iskanda inverted her plane and dive inverted toward the ground. And in the meantime, she locked the two EF-2000 through her secondary radar. Her last two QAAMs destroyed the two red fighters. They did try to evade, but the QAAMs were quicker than them.

" Sei Verdammt, du gnadenlose Söldnerin (be damned, you merciless she-merc)! Unlike you mercenaries I'm fighting for a real cause and proud of it." The leader screamed, while U-turning toward her.

" This pride will be your downfall; Rot 1" Pixy commented the saying of this Belkan who dared to think he had a moral high ground.

Pixy arrived in range then. Yet the leader managed to evade his missiles and even one QAAM. And Fleischer went head-on for this merc that dared to defy them. They exchanged a pair of missiles, who were evaded by a barrel-roll to the left, and the two were out of gun range in doing so.

" There's no pride in defending some far-right dictatorship. There's only in fighting for the ones who cannot." Iskanda retorted with a harsh voice, dashing toward this prideful Belkan. From her point of view, she had the moral high ground.

And if Rot 1 was trying to evade a gun engagement, Iskanda did the opposite: tilting her aircraft at ninety degree and extending her airbrake, she was on his nine hours when they crossed. And the Belkan craft was hit on all the fuselage. Iskanda even heard some scream of pain on the radio, but she did not care for a disrespectful proud Belkan at all. As the EF-2000 was going out of control in a stall, engine ablaze, she finished the craft with a pair of missiles.

" Enemy craft vaporized. Their captain, apparently." Pixy said, as the Typhoon was literally disintegrated.

" This is Eagle Eye, nice showdown, but I'm afraid it's only the beginning. I have two other waves of Belkan fighter incoming." Their AWACS operator said, but did not lose his cool, as he had thought they would have trouble dealing with the Rot squadron, but it was nothing for the two of them.

" Apparently, we are going against Gripen now." Pixy described the oncoming squadron.

Four grey Gripen C with an indigo-blue horizontal Line were incoming. Her emblem was a blue Heron, the eponymous nickname of their leader, known for his combat agility. He had downed fifth generation aircraft with ease, even three F-22As over Wesson when he supported the Gault squadron. Their blazon was completed by a medieval metallic helmet decorated with pinkish feathers. Squad number was 51st tactical fighter squadron.

They came into two group of two, each firing a XMAA on the Ustian crafts. Spreading out, the six Unit retaliated with a missile head-on on each Gripens, but they were shot for trash. The Ustian crafts intended to turn around after crossing the Belkan fighters' path, but the two opposite group fired other XMAAs on them, and after evading those XMAAs a second time, they found themselves pursued by two Gripens. Pixy managed to get in the six hours of his pursuers, but one of them hit the brakes and get behind him. Pixy then fired a pair of missiles on the Gripen in front of him, but he evaded them by a quick series of sharp turns. But by doing those, the Belkan pilot greatly depleted his speed. Hitting the burners and going right at Mach 2.5, Pixy managed to catch up and even outrun him by flying below his plane. Resuming his path, Pixy pulled out an Himmelman, and gunned the Belkan plane while barrel-rolling to evade a pair of missile.

" This man truly know how to fly an Eagle." Indigo 4 said, who was still pursuing Pixy, and going below the later, did a Split-S to get in the six of the Belkan merc, who again had a hard time evading the attack of the yet relatively slower but way more nimble smaller aircraft.

In the meantime, Iskanda had evaded more than three pairs of missiles and little volleys of XMAAs. And blue Heron, the leader managed to get a little gun score on her right wing. She lost control of the roll axis for some seconds but succeeded in leveling her aircraft anyway. But to score this hit, they have had to be at close range. At a range close enough to do some crazy maneuver, but it could work. Tilting her aircraft at ninety degree on the roll axis, and extending her airbrakes, she decelerated very quickly, and as laws of dynamic applied to her pursuers, she passed through the two Gripen Cs. They did spread out a little, fearing to be hit by this crazy Erusean merc.

" Was ist das?" (What's up?) Indigo 2 bellowed, before being seriously hit, as Iskanda had fired her twin guns on him while launching a pair of missiles on the Blue Heron.

" Gottverdammt, Blue Heron is down." Indigo 4 swore, seeing his leader bail-out at the last second, right after Pixy had evade his XMAAs for the second time, as he managed to lock him after the previous Himmelman of Galm 2.

But Pixy hit the burners again, but instead went for a Split-S and fired a pair of missiles still inverted, evading in the process a pair of missiles. Still, only one missile hit the Gripen, but if was enough to cripple it. And the F-15C was fast to get in his six and to gun him down.

" I'm beginning to take my tall here. Anything incoming on the long-range radar, Eagle Eye?" Iskanda asked with a mischievous voice, the thrill of the battle had surpassed the anger born of Rot 1's insults.

" I have 4 F/A-18Cs on my scanners. The Grün squadron." Johnson said, as 4 Hornets with a pale green two-tone camo entered the engagement zone.

" Grün 1 to all unit, unlock the ejection seat." Their leader ordered. He was supposed to carry LASMs and en route for a refueler and then to attack the remains of the allied naval forces, and now he was forced to carry XMAAs because two mercs decide to violate B7R. He was known as ''the owl" and it was a green owl that was pictured on their blazon, looking toward the enemy with her eyes surrounded by aggressive red arcs. A small F/A-18C and four orange stars were on the top of their squadron insignia, with their squad number: 108th for first air Unit 8th tactical squadron.

Using his unusual eye accuracy which earned him the nickname of owl, he quickly analyzed her aircraft: an unstable one, with now few ammos remaining. He knew he could win - Yet too many had already thought that today-.

" You're careful. I hope they are unlocked now." Iskanda said, before firing five second later a pair of missiles on one of the 4 F/A-18Cs, before hitting the deck to avoid a volley of six standard missiles locked onto her.

" Wichserin! Time to mind some serious business!" Grün 1 cursed at the Erusean merc, who was now in his six after a streak of sharp turns. He hit the deck, trying to get rid of her, but she was more tenacious than any fighter pilot he ever met.

" Take that, sucker!" She retorted while firing a pair of missiles on him. But he dumped some flares, and the IR-locked missiles were fooled with ease.

" I hate flares. So unnerving." Pixy commented, as he was pursuing another hornet which fooled his missiles with a bunch of flares.

So Iskanda decided to go for a gun kill. She was on ''PC max'' and each turn was a sufferance for her whole body due to G-forces, but she was closing on the Hornet. She could see the distance being reduced slowly on her HUD. But at five hundred meters, the third Hornet decided to go for a head-on attack, blocking her path. He was quickly gunned down by the twin guns of the X-29A but manage to get a hit on her left canards. The small metallic part was hopefully not rip off, but the asymmetrical distortion of her canards made the aircraft even more unstable.

This give to Grün leader the time to outrun her a bit, but in the meantime, Pixy had shot down his opponent after a short chase. And as Grün leader fired a volley of XMAAs toward his leader, he fired a pair of missiles, popping out from a stratus through which he quickly decreased his altitude. The F/A-18C had to turn hard to evade the second missile: he had dumped some flares which fooled the first, but not the second as Pixy did not launched them simultaneously but one after the other. And this disrupted the lock of Grün 1's XMAAs, which were evaded with ease by the agile X-29A.

" HQ, we need reinforcements here!" The leader admitted heartsick, as the X-29A and the F-15C were pursuing him now. He felt a gun burst hit his left engine, and two second later a greater burst tore the right exhaust into pieces, followed by two missiles. He did not understand what went wrong when he engaged her. But if he was correct, the expected reinforcements would take her of her, of this Belkan merc and even of the traitors aboard their AWACS.

" This is Eagle Eye, I wish I could say ''mission accomplished, RTB" but this is not over yet." Johnson commented, as he saw a big grey area moving on his radar monitor. A jammer aircraft. But it wasn't the Schnee Squadron. They used a EA-18G. This signal was a bit more powerful.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 20/04/1995, 11:45, Weather: high stratus.**

" I have seen for two seconds an EA-6B Prowler. But not what he's hiding." Pixy said, trying to change his radar frequency a bit to overcome the jamming, but the radar jammer was more powerful.

" I confirm the Prowler. But I have recognized something that gave me the chills last time I fought it." Iskanda added, she had seen the spot the first time on the archaic old radar of the Griffon, but it was definitely burned in her memory for good.

" Not this backward swept-wing UAV?" Pixy rhetorically asked, even if the answer was obvious.

" I am sorry to agree with her, the In Visual Range Thermal Camera had identified two of them. They are even a threat for our AWACS, you need to shoot them down ASAP!" Johnson implied, projecting the picture of their position on their radar.

" Well. Just to be sure, Galm 2, weapon check."

" No more QAAMs nor XMAAs, only standard missiles and guns, plus the EPMs." Pixy described the state of his ammo. And his number of missiles remaining was only fifteen.

" Same here. Just some missiles and gun ammo." She checked her weaponry and cursed the probability of presence of the Belkan craft with thermobaric ordnance which forced her to have these EPMs instead of two more QAAMs.

" Hans had failed to shoot down this Erusean merc last time." A Belkan voiced said, as he identified Galm 1.

" Ja, aber she survived and in a Nord 1500 Griffon. Do we have luck to take her down if she's into a modified X-29A who had already shot down half of three aces squadron?" Another Belkan said, a bit less confident in the abilities of those UAVs.

" It's the only rule here, and I will stick to it, dummies. So, I'll survive no matter what." Galm 1 replied while firing a pair of missiles to the drone, which was painted with a grey camo and its wing in a bright orange. The EA-6B had the same paint job. Yet nothing happened, as they were intercepted by a forward mounted SPK.

" Damned it, they can intercept from the front." Pixy noticed a bit late after an unsuccessful head-on attack. But attacking from behind ended in a failure too, as the drone was housing a rear mounted SPK between its twin engine.

" Forget the UAVs, shot the command aircraft." The AWACS operator suggested, as their attempts where unsuccessful from every angle.

" Roger." The two Ustian pilot said, and both fired a pair of missiles to the Growler, knowing due do its powerful armor than one pair wasn't enough.

But again, their attack failed, as the drones fired Interception missiles on theirs. These Interception missiles were shot from a small bay, which represented a weak point in these drones they could exploit if they managed to strike them from below.

" Freaking UAVs. I hate them. Pixy, saturation attack on the one to my left." Iskanda ordered, just after their unsuccessful attack.

" I'm on it. Feuer." Pixy replied, and both fired missiles at its twelve and six hours. They knew they would likely be intercepted, but during the time lapse necessary to destroy their projectile, the UAVs operator would be distracted by their fire.

The X-29A hit the deck just after releasing a second pair, followed by Pixy. But it was just to climb back the second later and sent a gun burst right on the inner bays of the UAV, which exploded shortly after. The saturation attack had worked, but it was very ammo-depleting. Now their missile count was below five for each Ustian pilot.

" They are vulnerable. Hard to destroy but not undefeatable."

" I told the professor that two UAVs wasn't enough." One Belkan operator complained.

" Ja, aber there were only two of them ready and operational." Another Belkan operator said.

As they were complaining of their lack of hardware, the two Ustian had manage to get in the six of the second drone, but its SPK was preventing them from gunning it. Even without needing to say it, they know what they had to do: another saturation attack.

" Galm 2, let's give him hell!" Iskanda ordered, and four missiles left their pylons to go strike the UAV. They were shot for trash, but this rendered the drone blind to their advance for some time, a weakness they understand from the last UAV they downed.

Pixy fired one more pair of missiles, only for them to be intercepted, yet all this diversion had been enough time for Iskanda to approach the UAV from the left. She outrun him, before extending her airbrakes, and launching two missiles on its three hours. And due to the closeness of the two aircrafts, the UAV did not have the time to intercept them successfully. They struck right in its weapon bay, and it exploded right away.

" These unnerving UAV are down. Now it's up to this EA-6B to go down with them." Johnson observed, as the Growler tried to open fire with its missiles and the few QAAMs it carried, but they were easily avoided by the way more agile Ustian fighters.

" Galm 1, Fox 2." Iskanda said, as she attacked the now defenseless EA-6B from its two hours.

" Galm 2, firing Fox 2!" Pixy added, launching his last two missiles on the already badly damaged Growler. He attacked it from above, and the two missiles exploded the cockpit in a million glass pieces. The three operator and the pilot were instantly vaporized.

" Finally, man had triumphed over machine, again." Johnson congratulated the two pilots of their flying skills.

" UAVs cannot surpass us. Even Künstlich Intelligenz lack the creativity of man." Pixy commented, as the remains of the Growler were falling to the ground.

" Hum, guys, I think our trouble is not over yet. I've got three bogies, on supersonic approach." Iskanda interrupted this highly technical conversation.

" Gottverdammt, they never know when to recognize defeat, can't they?" Pixy cursed, a bit tired of this prolonged dogfight which seemed to never end. Besides, they were only with gun ammo and the EPMs now.

" I have one Berkut and two unknown incoming on my scanners. Be ready for anything." Johnson described what it was seeing on his monitor. However, he had a bad feeling about these two unknowns. The forwards swept wing fighters which carries thermobaric ordnance hadn't been seen since Wesson.

 **Outskirt of B7R, Belka, 20/04/1995, 11:55 Weather: high stratus.**

One Sukhoi 47 with a greyish three tone paint job among its body and the wingtips and rudder painted with gold and white lines and a black radome along with the two Wesson-UFOs - as the Osean had named them - were approaching B7R. Initially, like many pilots who were disturbed of their operations, they were supposed to go on an anti-ship mission against a new Osean supercarrier. Yet because of the skills of the merc the sixth Ustian Unit hired, they were forced to finish this first battle over B7R. But for him, the losses of these UAV was not such a bad thing: he had always been opposed to this project.

If his project and his protegees survived this engagement, it would still be a victory anyway.

" Meister, are we authorized to engage with MPBMs?" A young Belkan voice asked from the Wesson-UFO at his right.

" Clear to engage, meine Erbe (heir). But be ready for anything, these mercs tend to be tricky."

The two Wesson-UFOs hit the burners, temporarily outrunning the slightly slower Su-47. They had already downed Osea's Death Star. What could stop them?

 **Area B7R, Belka, 20/04/1995, 12:00, Weather: high stratus.**

Iskanda was beginning to feel two things, usually not linked: to be bored and hungry. And the pressure of the anti-g suit was not very comfortable to bear for such a great amount of time. This mission should have ended for at least twenty minutes, and yet Belka was still sending reinforcements. Still, if they sent two much reinforcements, they would end up without a single round of ammo.

" Wesson-UFOs sighted! Be ready for EPMs launch!" Johnson said, as the IVRTC recognize the two now unanimously feared aircrafts.

" Roger that, AWACS. Galm 2, put your EPMs on standby." Iskanda quickly decided, as the two Wesson-UFOs were now at six kilometers head-on.

" Galm 2 Ver, EPMs on standby."

And one minute later, Gault 9, the first ''Erbe'' had a lock on the two Ustian mercs. He simply pushed a switch and the heavy Hypersthene-powered Multi-Purpose Burst Missile was fired, followed by one other and the two others of the second ''Erbe''. Equipped with a powerful liquid propellant engine, the two missiles broke the sound barrier just ten second after being fired. Until now, these missiles have been unstoppable, with Osean pilot calling them ''The Gates of Hell'' as they could engulf even little squadron in their five hundred meters blast radius. But the order their foe issued the next minute was quite strange and let them a little puzzled for some time.

" Galm 1, firing EPMs! Now!" She fired the counter missiles against this thermobaric ordnance. Now her finger was clenched on the remote detonation switch, as they had to detonate the pulse really close to the enemy Hypersthene-powered MPBMs.

They let the eight missiles slowly close the gap between the two formations for ten seconds, before activating the devices. Four bright blue electronic pulse appeared over B7R. But the blue electronic blasts did not light the sky for long, as the Hypersthene-powered missiles exploded right away. It was like they were seeing a small nuke detonate in mid-air. The brightness of the sheer explosion ignited the sky for almost ten seconds before it dissipated. The shockwaves made them stall for a bunch of seconds, but they quickly recovered from it, and resumed their path toward the three Belkan fighters.

" Was passiert?" (What's happened?) A young Belkan voice said, with the pilot to which this voice belongs frowning in astonishment as their attack was trashed by just two mercs.

" Ich weiß nichts (I don't know)." A young Belkan female voice added with the same level of astonishment filling her right now.

" Ich kann erklären (I can explain): We have broken your little toys. Thesermeister was smarter than you, Kupchenko!" Iskanda interrupted them, having identified the Gault insignia on the Su-47 as they crossed their path. And they were now engaged in a fierce dogfight with the two of them circling around, as the Berkut and the X-29A possessed similar turn rate

Pixy on the other hand was not in better state either: he managed to land a slight gun hit on the right engine of one of those Wesson-UFOs, but the enemy pilot extended his airbrakes to rejoin with the other behind Pixy. He was currently fiercely chased by two super-mobile forward swept-wing fighters with vectored thrusters and was evading their high caliber cannons just by the skin of his teeth.

Iskanda did not land a single bullet on Kupchenko's Su-47. He was an ace, she had to give him credit for his flying skill which seemed to be equal with hers. With unbearable ease, he kept outturning her, despite her pulling every trick against him. Even outrunning him and doing her head-to-tail-like maneuver did not work, as he evaded her bullets by a simple double turn. If she had a little mobility edge due to the instability of her new wings, the numeric hardware of the Berkut compensate better his instability than hers, allowing shorter time of response. Of course, it was not instantaneous response like these neuronal links that were numerous in sci-fi, but this added to optic fiber instead of electronic commands meant that this modified Sukhoi was more agile than her X-29A in the end.

This dogfight lasted five minutes before she became the pursued, with Kupchenko trailing her close. She had really hard time keeping her plane away from Kupchenko's line of fire: he was firing everything he had: guns, missiles and SAAMs. Yet if the plane had almost instantaneous response, the bay still needed little time to open, this giving the X-29A a little edge to evade its fire, even if it had almost lost all its weaponry. As she evaded a pair of SAAMs, with Gault 1 managing to keep the lock for ten seconds which look like an eternity, she realized a fact: she needed to find a way to win this fight quickly. She and Pixy did not have a single missile left, and her gun was going to run dry shortly if Kupchenko kept evading her attacks.

" Herr Kupchenko, I am sorry for trashing your highly advanced Hypersthene-powered MPBMs, but I am tired of fighting for 40 minutes. Any idea on how to end this prolonged dogfight?" She asked to the enemy ace, while evading a very close gun burst.

" It's surprising that Erusean she-merc speak my language." The soft and charismatic voice with a strong Yukte accent of Anton Kupchenko spoke, while he stopped pulling the trigger. " I am open to do some DACT again you. Belkan chivalrous traditions imposed that the first arrived on the battlefield dictate the rule of engagement."

" What? Are you serious, Meister?" Erbe 2 said, a bit surprised that their mentor was accepting to duel honorably a simple Erusean merc.

" Dead serious, Zveda." He replied at his subordinate, this time with a still charismatic voice, yet one marked with the tone of a commandant which expected anything he said to be treated as an order.

" Beware, Kupchenko, dead mens tell no tales." Pixy warned him.

" So, Frau Galm ein, was haben Sie entscheiden? (What did you decide) Gault 1 asked, still turning around the X-29A.

" These are my conditions: we will begin by flying in opposite direction for five second. Then, victory conditions are only one lock, no time limit.'' Iskanda explained, breaking the chase.

" Gut. And if I lock you, I can fire?" Kupchenko let her precise this point, positioning himself in starting position.

" There's an if." She replied indirectly to his question, her voice filled with sarcasm as she rejected the probability of this event.

" DACT begin in 5 seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Engage!" Johnson said, putting all his faith into this crazy Erusean. If she was locked, she would be dead, and Kupchenko would then kill every allied in the area, even without the threat of the Hypersthene their AWACS was in reach of those Wesson-UFOs.

" Make Belka proud, Meister." The male Belkan voice said.

" Do not worry, Cipher. There's nothing I can't overcome." Kupchenko replied, using the nickname this pilot received after his doings at Hoffnung.

" Yet impossible is not Ustian." Iskanda retorted, while heading toward his opponent after they had flown straight for five second. Kupchenko did the same, and they crossed their path, yet too quickly for any of the two to lock the other.

Iskanda did her head-to-tail-like maneuver while Kupchenko pulled out a hairpin turn, yet her post-stall maneuver was faster than his, and he dived to avoid being locked.

" Von wem haben Sie diese erstaunlichen Manöver gelernt, Fräulein?" (who taught you this amazing maneuver, Milady?) Kupchenko said, as he was climbing, quickly followed by the X-29A.

" Niemand. Ich schaffe es." she retorted, following him. However, as the little square on the HUD moved toward the Su-47 to lock him, the Berkut open its landing flaps, making her overshoot. But it was not enough to be behind her. Gault 1 ended up being at the same level than her, climbing toward the freed Azur.

The two of them kept climbing for quite a long time. At some point, one of them alternatively tried to level up to gain the precious lock, with Iskanda using her head-to-tail-like maneuver to evade or try to lock, and Kupchenko having a preference for streaks of sharp turns. Pixy and the two Belkans were watching them from below, both squadron hoping their respective leader would win.

Pixy could see both leaders trying all that physics allowed a plane to do, yet no one had the edge. From his plane, they look like a couple of dancers, dangerously close to each other, entangled into a morbid kind of waltz. The two pairs of exhaust seemed like two fireflies pursuing each other, as they kept climbing toward the dark blue skies of the stratosphere.

" I must warn you, Galm 1 and Gault 1, you are approaching the limit of altitude for your engines. You're not flying the Griffon this time, Galm 1." Eagle Eye informed the two pilots.

Iskanda heard it and came to realize she was near the twenty-kilometer barrier. For how long she had climbed, she couldn't tell: in this kind of fierce dogfight, a second was a minute, a minute a entire day, and days seems eternal. Yet both pilots kept climbing to the fringe of their engine's capabilities, knowing that the first to dive would be the one pursued, and both wanted to end as pursuer in this fight.

But when the Berkut reach twenty-two kilometer, it entered into a stall. A stall that became a spin. Kupchenko had overestimated the tuned engine of his Su-47 and was surprised by the fact that this X-29A bore a twin engine instead of the standard single exhaust engine. And this engine allowed Iskanda to climb five hundred meters more until she dived, yet in a voluntary spin instead of an accidental one.

And for all the dive Iskanda tried to catch up with Kupchenko, as he was descending toward the peak of the central crater that made the round table itself. At some point wind and water erosion had sculpted some pillars out of the cliffs surrounding the limits of the crater, while flattening it surface into a hemispheric one. From the air, this giant natural sculpture looked like some kind of round table. Only the central peak was left, with the edge of the cliff creating a very short ravine. This is where he was heading, where his overall better mobility should give him the edge on this - he hated to admit that someone could be or even think to be his equal - Erusean crazy woman. All he had to was to evade her lock, which this spin allowed easily, and to go out of the said spin.

Iskanda had almost reach Mach 2 while diving, yet the Su-47 had better high-speed mobility than her aircraft. There was a technological gap of twenty years Herr Steller had tried to reduce, but even with his adjustment and her skill this Kupchenko guy had the advantage. But she was wondering where he was heading, and above all, how he would go out of this spin.

She had the response thirty-five second later, as he activated an anti-spin parachute. She tried to lock on him while he was decelerating, but her radar decided for some reason to lock onto the parachute first. She was arriving quick in this ravine area. Too quick. Yet as she was extending her airbrakes to its peak a red light which came to live, just below the small screen where her belly radar was displayed. It said, "emergency airbrakes". She shrugged, thinking that Steller should have mentioned this, but hoped it would work.

Four small metallic part extended of the fuselage just before the exhausts. And both planes ended up flying at low speed in the ravine Kupchenko had foreseen to end this dogfight into. He could already see the X-29A laying burned in the ravine, joining some other planes wreckage and dead corpses no one would look for.

However, he forgot that his and this merc's skill could be modeled as two asymptotes, with Galm one's asymptote having reached and maybe gone further than his. He flew very low in the ravine, sometime having to tilt his aircraft to avoid fallen rock or some kind of natural bridges erosion had created. And she followed him, slowly but surely catching up with him. And fifteen second later, as he flew other a portion of the ravine that was a bit deeper than the rest of it, the unthinkable happened.

She had pursued him for almost a minute in this very narrow ravine, with the small square of lock trying desperately to lock onto the Sukhoi. The lock-on system kept beeping as it was following the thermal signature of the Su-47's engine, yet Iskanda did not heard the beep anymore. Nor the "Pull up" message that her radio was repeating every five second as she was close to the slopes of the ravine by mere decimeters sometimes. The only noise she was hearing now was the foolish and erratic beatings of her heart. She had the feeling to be running for a marathon as she was flying in this narrow space. But despite her body showing sign of fatigue, she couldn't allow Kupchenko to win this. And as she saw the ravine getting a bit deeper below Kupchenko's craft only ten meters in front of her, she knew what to do.

The two Belkan, Pixy and the AWACS operators did not share his coolness. Pixy was looking to an old photo of Laura and himself he had kept aboard his F-15C, wondering if his leader was defeated today, would he be shot down then and join Laura in death? The two Belkan ''Erben'' were a bit with the same spirit: everything they had achieved and could achieve in the future was dependent of Kupchenko's will. If he disappeared the truth would appear, yet sometimes truth could do more harm than small lies. Johnson was looking on an old photography too: one of his sister, a blond Belkan in her forties with two brown-haired daughters. He hadn't been able to communicate with the three of them since they had to leave Directus and being in a possible near-death scenario was not reassuring.

Iskanda knew she had only one chance. If she failed, she would end up locked in no time, and then destroyed in the next second. Yet failure was something she did not know at this point: she had had some little hits, almost being defeated twice in this war, but facing victory and defeat was a common thing for warrior. So, she inverted her plane, facing the bottom of the ravine, and accelerate below Kupchenko's Su-47.

" Was machst-du, mein kleines eruseanerine Freundin?" (What are you doing, my little Erusean Friend?) Kupchenko wondered, as he saw her getting below his plane. Yet if she did that she would have to climb after, as the ravine was losing its deepness a few dozen meter further. And he would be in a perfect position to lock her and then slaughter her plane in no time.

But he never had the time to enact this perfect strategy, as Iskanda began tilting her plane on the pitch axis a bit, trying to orient her belly radar toward Kupchenko's craft. On her little screen, she saw the square locking on Kupchenko's air intakes. And then for Kupchenko, the unthinkable happened: his lock-on alarm blared, as his opponent screamed joyfully " Verschlossen!". Right after, she climbed just in front of his gun, laughing maniacally out of mad joy.

Kupchenko was taken aback: how did she manage to lock him in such a position? He had no choice but to agree that as a warrior, he had finally experimented both victory and defeat. Yet he would not cease to serve.

" Ich anerkenne dein Sieger (I recognized your victory). Gault squadron, cease the operation and withdraw from B7R."

" Zveda, Ver."

" Erbe ein, Ver." The pilot which was now identified as Cipher said.

" Auf Wiedersehen, Fraulein. Ich hoffe wir werden uns wiedersehen, Söldnerin. (Goodbye Milady. I ho will meet again)" Kupchenko said goodbye to this merc who had revealed to be a worthy opponent.

" Bye Gault 1. Next time i won't forget to keep some ammo to shoot you down." She hoped their paths would cross other times too.

" Well, I had some fears when I lost visual as you entered in this ravine, but in the end, you survived… And won." Pixy congratulated his flight leader. He wouldn't had been able to do the same level of flying she had to pull out against Gault 1. A battle of ace was for aces and between aces, after all.

" This is the commandant Weeker onboard the Osean carrier Kestrel. The naval forces had advanced well today. Your support would be rewarded." The message was diffused on all allied waves, but its content did not please much the pilots of Ustio's sixth Unit.

" Damn Osean weaklings! Are we just some decoys?" Iskanda intervened, not liking the idea that this whole operation which could have cost her life was just to protect the Osean fleet that couldn't deal with anti-ship squadron such as Grün squadron.

" I hate to admit, but us merc would always be treated as such by Oseans. The mercs Osea hired only care for money, they don't want idealist ones like you and me." Pixy agreed with Iskanda's disapproval.

" Whatever, this operation is over and successful. Galm team, RTB." Eagle Eye announced, and the two fighters turn to the South-West of B7R, its Ustian part before the war, still chatting about the way Osea disposed of them, complaining that even this Kupchenko guy had a better appreciation of them than their very allies.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 20/04/1995, 13:00, Weather: freezing fog.**

The back travel was a short one, as they didn't bump into any Belkan squadron on their way toward Valais. From the skies they could see the crews on the ground melting the few ice patches that had formed on the runway, using short-range flamethrowers. And these reddish fires were all they could see of the base along with the guiding lights on the runway, as all was engulfed into the fog.

" That's strange, seeing this ballet of flamethrowers." Iskanda observed, as the ice patches were vaporized.

" At least if some Belkan Kommandos arrived here we would welcome them warmly." Pixy joked, waiting a bit that the final ice patches were finally evaporated.

" This is Base control; you are clear to land." Henri calm voice indicated, satisfied to see both of them coming back alive.

The two pilots pulled down their gears and landed together. The runway wasn't large; however, it was large enough for two fighters or the following AWACS. The three airplanes landed quickly, not wanting to be surprised by new ice patches. And as they went out of their hangar, they could see new ice patches already forming from the condensation of the water from their exhaust gas, adding a bit more water to the one in aerial suspension from the freezing fog. A high-altitude plane wouldn't have been able to see through the fog even. And they could only see the base buildings, but not the mountains behind it, and of course not the valley either. They carefully walked toward the briefing room, yet not carefully enough to prevent one thing from happening.

" Gott Verdammt." Iskanda yelled, as she slipped on a small ice patch.

" I got you." Her wingmen said, as he prevented her from falling to the ground. It would be ironic: coming back unharmed from the round table and be hurt by falling due to some ice patch.

Hopefully, the weather control had foreseen an increase in temperature for the next week. These icing fog could happen very often and very often it was appearing completely out of the blue, but despite these horrific conditions this base needed to be up and running all day and all night of the year. The briefing room was quiet, as the Komyeta and Halo squadron hadn't come back of their respective missions yet.

" Well, central command was very satisfied about how you ended the Rot, Grün and Indigo squadrons. Downing an entire squadron of typhoon isn't an easy job." Koenig summarize the aftermath of their mission but forget the two last squadrons they encounter. Then he shut down the Axe and Hammer software, to open another one, a simple picture display system.

" But central command has no real concern about UCAVs and Wesson-UFOs i guess?" Iskanda interrupted him, as Koenig was about to say something on these last two squadrons.

" They aren't counted as official squadrons. Furthermore, we don't even know their designation. Belka anti-spy system is still very efficient, that's something they can be proud of." Koenig said, while displaying the dagger shaped drone with backward-swept wing.

" And Osea did not recognize the existence of these UCAVs, as none of their satellite still existing was able to track them." Johnson added, while replacing the picture of the UCAV by one of the Osean continent, which showed the circular area of satellite surveillance, but many of them were set as " data link loss". Yet Osea did not know what was destroying their satellites. Some had transmitted a bright flash before they disappear, but it was not enough information to theorize anything on some anti-satellite armament.

" But what I'm about to reveal is from my past career in the Belkan Air Force. You both need to know your enemy a bit more." Koenig began a long explanation which was interrupted at 13:30 when they went to eat, and at 14:30 when the Halo squadron - only the 5 and 7 come back - landed.

Concerning Halo 12 and 10, and Komyeta squadron, they were now located on the new super-carrier of Osea. Yet they couldn't say their localization or the name of the ship, even to their Ustian leaders. The only thing they could say was how boring this escort mission had turned.

" So, you met no one?" Iskanda asked on the live video conversation, still in the briefing room.

" A little squadron of MiG 29 and F-14Ds on our way, but not a single bomber, fighter, ship or submarine from Belka." Valentin described the state of the operation, at some hundreds of kilometers from the Futuro canal.

" You provide us some good distractions, guys." Alekseï added, a bit bored of the lack of enemy in the vicinity to shot down.

" And Iskanda survived a duel with Kupchenko!" Pixy announced, with a happy voice.

" Yeah, this guy knew how to fly a Berkut. Besides, your idea for countering these Hypersthene thermobaric ordnance worked. Congratulations for Thesermeister!" She raised a Belkan beer they had opened to celebrate her victory.

" Save us some for when we came back?" Halo 12 asked, hoping the next operation - above Futuro canal - would be with the rest of the sixth Unit. If they come there, victory would be achievable.

" Don't worry, we have something better in reserve for the reconquest of Directus. I will not authorize you to rest until we take it back." Koenig inquired, willing to retake the capital he had to leave due to the lack of reinforcements Osea promised but who came too late.

Then the pilots talked about the Belkan they had faced that day: the one whose squadron was responsible of Laura's death and was known as Ashley Bernitz, aka Grabacr 1. Yet she took eight Sukhoi-47 of his twelve aircraft squadron down with her. Maybe some civilian would have recorded the fight, Pixy guessed. And maybe he could see her last fight in which he couldn't help her.

Yet, another subject come on the table: of course, they talked about the few data Koenig had patched them about Kupchenko and his Erben. Of course, now they could finally get why he hated Osean that much but did not bear any grudge toward over allies such as Sapin, Ustio or Yuktobania, his grandfather's homeland. Kupchenko's father had been an ace in the 1950's. However, his mother was a mystery for even high ranking Belkan officials.

And the final talk was about what halo 5 and 7 heard from this sentenced to death Sapin, about this ''Sancta Victoria''.

" So, do you know anything about this legendary woman?" Fred asked to his comrade, especially Pixy.

" I don't. But Laura sometimes refers to her before engaging great aces, asking "Sankt Victoria" to look upon her. Furthermore, the main cathedral of Directus is named "Basilique Sainte Victoire"." Pixy explained the few he knew about this woman.

" So, maybe we will learn a bit more about her doings when we take back Directus." Fred guessed.

" Good. Now we have some tourism planned after the victory." Iskanda said, trying to map in her mind the city the Ustians described : an semi old semi modern city, with entire quarter of medieval and Sainte Victoire, the cathedral in Flamboyant Gothic, along with other Gothic-style and classic church, some little medieval castle on her outskirt, and two new quarter, yet in some kind of modernized medieval-looking small building made of stone, not just skyscrapers like Oured in full glass and concrete. Directus was not a city which spread vertically but more horizontally.

 **End of chapter. Yet of course I prolonged B7R engagement. Always found that mission too quick. Yet having multiple aces squadron allow you not to have this "Quatsch" (Quatsch bullshit in German) of aces that survived multiple death, thing that I hated in ACJA…And Yeah, Cipher is on the other side… But what does side even mean?** **(you have three hours to expatiate on this)**

 **Feel free to like, review, favorite, share your mind on my writing.**

 **09/06/19: minor grammatical corrections. some more on 30/07/19 as well as on7/1/20.**


	7. To know your enemies

**Tauberg Air Base, Belka, 20/04/1995, 13:00, Weather: outcast.**

His Sukhoi 47 was now parked on the runway. On his way back from the round table, Kupchenko was pleased to see his pride still standing high above the ground. He had almost a smirk of irony on his face as he realized the allied forces would have to face this - if they managed to take back Ustio and the great Lakes -. A thought unimaginable just a while ago, but which seemed way more plausible since the encounter of this day. He would make them taste the bitter flavor of defeat.

He was a bit angry about his fight. Usually, no one could best him. And today he met defeat for the first time since ages. Of course, it was in some kind of a Belkan DACT, but it didn't change what it was: a defeat. Other defeated men sometimes chose to hide. Kupchenko wasn't planning on this. He would lie in ambush and wait for the good time to make understand this Erusean merc the bitter taste of defeat. Of course, he wasn't immune to failure. And so was her. No warrior ever was. But history, this cruel lady, taught him not to dwell on his failures but to learn from them. It wasn't the first time that history taught him a lesson of life. And it won't be the last time either.

As he walked from his hangar to the HQ, he was joined by his two " Erbe". The first was a tall young Belkan man with black hair cut short and green eyes. TAC name Cipher, however, his real name was Zephyr Sylvester. Unusual name, yet this person was an unusually talented pilot. The other "Erbe" which TAC name was Zveda, bore also an unusual name: Freya Wilhelm. Both were orphans he met at a particular moment. He always remembered this first encounter, so simple in principle but with so much consequences he didn't imagine them then.

 **Hoffnung Air Base, Belka, 12/06/1993, 15:30, Weather: high stratus.**

Kupchenko was watching the first flight of the cadets in fighter planes. They were flying two-seater F-15Ds for training purposes. It had just a grey painting, nothing to stand out amidst the other training crafts. He had shown interest to some cadets of this year at Hoffnung Air Academy. This one was piloted by the cadet named Zephyr Sylvester. Orphan from unknown origin, tall and slim pilot with green eyes and dark hairs, straight A-student but had shown disrespect for authority, and violence against a wealthier pupil in Gymnasium. This was the data the Base commander agreed to give him.

" I agree, schönen Abflug." A Belkan man in its late forties said. His amical face was completed by a well cut and short white beard.

" It would be an even better take-off if he learned under your oversight, Kellerman." Kupchenko commented. Kellerman was among the few that fully understand him and what he went through. Kellerman's amical face had always caused sympathy among the pilot he met in his long life.

" I'm retiring in July, I'm just here to enjoy the flight." Kellerman rejected with a negative gesture of his hand the idea to train a new Kellerman Grupp a last time. He thought he had earned a well-deserved retirement.

And for a show, they got a show: after the copilot, the instructor nicknamed Huckeblein the Raven explained to the cadet how to land before overshooting in order for the cadet to do the landing properly, something that wasn't foreseen happened. The fighter was beginning its steady path toward the runway when out of the blue the young Belkan tried an Himmelman. Immediately, an angry semi-old Belkan voice - who tried to show authority but hadn't a single bit, from Kupchenko's perspective - screamed on the waves:

" Jagdflieger Zephyr, you're are not in an air show! Cease this madness and land immediately!"

" Ver." The young Belkan let out with great reluctance. Why was he thinking when he pulled this?

The F-15D landed carefully and quickly. This young one had some skills, he had to give him credit for this. Yet he was only receiving complains of his trainer when he should be praised for his maneuver.

" Cadet, I think I will let you repaint every plane with a pencil, this should teach you the respect of discipline and command chain!"

The cadet didn't say a thing. Being raised as an orphan taught him not to respond sometimes. So, another man spoke for him, a man with brown hair and small cold grey eyes. He had a strange smile, yet it was the "to give chills to your spine" kind of smile. This man, which was identified by his uniform as major Anton Kupchenko, Gault leader, seemed cold yet charismatic. And with his cold and charismatic voice, he defended the cadet:

" Leadership depends on information and comprehension. Not so obedience. Sometimes a commander may choose to share details of his plan. Often, he may not. In either case, obedience must be instant and complete. Such automatic response relies on trust between commander and those commanded. And that trust can only be obtained through leadership. I don't think you possess leadership, Huckebein. Because this young man surely doesn't show obedience."

" My respect, Major Kupchenko, but this Dummkopf has risked my and his life doing this crazy maneuver." Huckebein pointed the cadet which was still silent like the dead.

" There's no genius without craziness. For me this Himmelman was greatly executed, for a first time I mean, cadet Sylvester."

" Danke Major." The timid voice of the young Belkan pilot said, astonished that this high-ranked officer was standing out for him. He heard the trainer grunted as he was moving toward the other cadets. Two other F-15Ds landed just after, yet without any crazy maneuvers in their flight.

The second batch of cadet was a bit less mixed, as one female pilot, which name was Freya Wilhelm, manage to do a Split-S as she was going to land. Still, his instructor showed nothing but a little sigh of embarrassment. If the top brass thought they could let trainees do what they want, they were wrong, the trainer thought for himself. He came from a notorious Belkan family, yet never managed to graduate high enough to get out of this base. Once he went to B7R but was shot down by some tuned MiG-31 assisted by a F-15C. The irony was that Gault squadron was there too, but as everyone in the vicinity was flying on his own, even between officials, and for this he did not receive any help. And for this Huckebein bore a solid grudge toward Kupchenko.

But one other cadet, some typical blond-haired Belkan named Robert Zahlner, did try to pull out something to impress the gallery. Yet he failed, and it was only because of the good reflexes of his instructor that he didn't enter into a spin. Spin that would have been deadly at this altitude.

" Not everyone has the skill to fight from scratch. War is a game of skill, mind against mind, yet when the skill lacked, the result is often a mind filled with resentment and jealousy toward the ones that possess that particular skill." Kupchenko commented this poor performance, emphasizing "resentment''.

" Your way of thinking, my dear, I don't know if it come from your Yukte origin, but I always find it quite tactical, even when you're not planning tactics." Kellerman added, before resuming to what he was about to say about this pilot. " Still, everyone can become a good pilot if they have a well-oriented mind."

" You're right. Weiterentwicklung ist immer erreichbar (improvement is always reachable)."

The two high-ranking officers kept talking for a while, before leaving the small tribunes from where they had observed these flights. Yet if Kellerman's direction was the control tower for a little debriefing with the four instructors of the cadets that flew today, Kupchenko's was toward these new flight protegees. It wasn't long before he found them right outside their hangar where they waited for the training to end. And the little group of five cadets seemed to be entangled in some kind of unkind talks.

" I could have done this Himmelman too, Ziphir. Whatever you succeeded in today, you won't become anything. You and Freya have no one to back you up." Robert said with a voice filled with condescendence.

" We prefer to learn to fly than to harass, and to fight than to let weak parents corrupt." Freya retorted harshly to the wealthy cadet, which can be deduced from the high costly watch he was wearing. Yet as she retorted she pushed the cadet backward, and he badly felt due to the unforeseen strength of the Belkan girl.

" Hey, Major, couldn't you tell these two future eternal zweite Lieutenants to give me the respect my family deserve?" The cadet dared to issue an order to Kupchenko, as he was rising from the ground. On his right hand where he had hit the ground was now a pretty nasty wound.

This Robert cadet was referring to Erich Hillenbrand, a young pilot, which parents were simple factory workers, that had reached this rank, and was happy from this achievement. Besides, Hillenbrand was now Schnee leader, and everyone respected him now despite his origin. And what Kupchenko hated most was this kind of guy who put their lineage and wealth above their true skills.

" Some people have skills, and still work their skills to perfect them. Other haven't yet work hard to gain the skills they strive for. There's a last category: those who try to buy the skills their minds lack. However, skills is not something that you can just pay for. Acquiring skills is something that require patience and will. And if someone can forbid those who had skills for showing them, those who doesn't possess it usually show complete and bitter failure, especially if they belong to the third category." Kupchenko give this cryptic answer, who could have been a great way to begin some dissertation, before resuming to a harsher answer, pushing aside the charism in his voice to have only the cold part.

" Next time you try to buy someone's silence; I will make sure you are sent to the Valaisian Alps for one or two months. Usually snow cooled even the worst minds our country had produced. Dismissed. No briefing, no fly for two week and no food for one day, it seemed a fair punishment."

" But they wounded me!" He tried to retort one last time, before Kupchenko definitely lost his cool and yelled at the cadet, something he did very rarely.

" Halt die Fresse, deine Meinung ist nutzlos. Zwei Tag ohne Nahrung. Jetzt raus!" Kupchenko was now angry, and this little pretentious cadet would suffer from it. This meeting with those two who assumed to speak against the authority someone try to create even when he had none was something that made the journey from Tauberg almost worthy.

Of course, the punishment wasn't fully applied by the base commander. Robert was just grounded a week, yet for Freya and Zephyr it was a full month. Kupchenko hated to yield some authority to a subordinate when it wasn't necessary, and even more when the latter wasn't helping through position he possessed or skill Kupchenko could lack. Still, as he explained to his chief of research back at Tauberg, those two pilots could be worthy for his new program.

However, if this first encounter was solely due to randomness, the second one was well planned. But this second encounter would have consequences for the months and even years to come, especially for the city of Hoffnung.

 **Hoffnung Air Base, Belka, 22/10/1993, 23:00, Weather: little night fog.**

He was now waiting for them in their hangar, with a two-seater F-15D ready to take off, with full ground and air ammo. They would have to choose soon. The situation they had been put into through a streak of random events had already caused disastrous consequences for their career. They were now considered as Verrätern (traitors) by their commander, even if they do what was right. But what is right for a single soldier or pilot on the battlefield is always relative. They relied on ethics to choose rather than military protocol, yet sometimes these protocols were turned irrelevant by the circumstances of the fight. This time the Belkan high command closed his eyes too much on the great scale consequences, which could have been way more disastrous than three KIA (killed in action).

And five minutes later they arrived in the hangar, looking breathless. They were a bit surprised to see the Major waiting for them, arm crossed, like he was just waiting for them and not ready to alarm the entire base of their escape. Because if all that had happened before was not his doing, his presence and their arrival at this point were part of a plan already set one week before this day.

" Werden Sie uns verhaften (are you going to arrest us)?" A reluctant Zephyr said.

" Nicht im Entferntesten. (Not in the least)" Kupchenko shrugged at this possibility that would give him nothing.

" Was denn?" (Then what?) Freya asked, wondering why a high-ranking officer was risking the said rank by talking with convicts.

" You see, cadet Freya, Battle plans cannot include every contingency. And today those very contingencies are up to your choice. Do you chose to run out of Belka and be free, but with the possibility that every day you would see eight Black and Red MiG-31s coming to shot you down without mercy, or you can choose another path." Kupchenko responded, fully aware of the abilities of Zubov's flying assassin team.

" And what's the other choice?" Freya asked again, curious.

" I suppose you heard of the confederation of Belkan counties that lasted almost one century and a half. I am trying to recreate this old alliance, but on a slightly bigger scale. And I need mens and women on my side when I will act." Kupchenko explained, referring to a time when Belkans were not considered evils and Osean the good guys who would give money to save countries from the very recessions their traders created.

" You want pawns." Zephyr retorted a bit harshly.

" Warfare can be compared to chess, it's true. Yet you won't be pawns. Pawns are the ones I will manipulate in due time. You would be more knights than pawns. Knights in a new shiny armor of composites instead of mere Duraluminium." Kupchenko corrected Zephyr, hoping to make them join him today.

" That's promising." Freya commented, with her arm now laying on her side. Kupchenko's proposition had cooled her worried mind. In her mind she had already accepted this path.

" Gut. Mein Schaft (Good. My squad) will try to intercept after you destroy the intercepting capacities of Hoffnung Air Base. If you wanna join me, fly to the Kreuzbergsee. There you will bail-out and your plane will be destroyed."

They did not respond, still a bit reluctant to agree on the order he gave them. Still, no one on this base tried to help them or prove their innocence.

" Bis halb Mitnacht, meine jungen Freunde. (To 23:30, my young friends.)" Then Kupchenko get out of their hangar, wishing them good luck in Belkan (viel Glück) on his way out.

The choice was not difficult to do. They couldn't understand the tactician that Kupchenko was, nor the tactics he had foreseen for them. Yet they did not have the foolishness to resist the will of this tactician.

And thirty minute later, as the Gault squadron was patrolling not far from Hoffnung, they get this message from central commandment.

" This is Hoffnung Air Base to Gault Squadron. Two pilots have gone rogue and bombed our SAMs, Flaks and shot down our interceptors as they were taxiing. They are flying just above the Löre river. Hunt them down ASAP."

" This is Gault 1, Ver. ETA: ten minutes."

" This is Gault eight to leader. They will be out of the Hoffnung airspace at this point." One of his pilots said with a thick Sapin accent, Fernando Perez. Even if he was not the only non-Belkan of his squadron, he was the one which his accent made him stand out from the squadron. He was tasked with the long-range radar target finder, as he had a engineer diploma in this the field of telecommunication applied to aeronautic - almost everyone in Gault Squadron had an engineer diploma -. And as everyone in this squadron, he knew what was going on today.

" Sorgst nicht, acht (don't worry, eight) We will catch up if they stay in subsonic to keep low profile." Gault number two said. He was a true Belkan named Franz Speidel. Second in command, he often helped Kupchenko's efforts to coordinate such a big squadron.

" Gut. Ich will diese Verrätern Tot (Good. I want those traitors dead)!" The base commander of HAB said, as he was watching the firefighters slowly extinguishing the flames that were born of the few UGLBs the rogue F-15D dropped.

 **Kreuzbergsee, Belka, 22/10/1993, 00:20, Weather: thick night fog.**

The semi-cold night surrounded the area with a thick cloud of condensed water. If it was not icing the glasses of the F-15D thanks to the efficient de-icing system, it limited their visibility. If they were not at midnight but at midday, they could have seen the lake of Kreuzbergsee, in a small cuvette between four old and eroded mountains. Millennia ago, there was a glacier there, in the ice age. Not it was just a nice touristic spot for all water sports, as some nice streams were carved through the mountainous terrain. There were the source of many rivers of Belka, including the Tau who run through Tauberg and the Schayne Plains, the Löre through Hoffnung before going into Fato and the Zülten which run through Sudentor, going through a pass in the Waldreich Mountains, and then to the Northern see.

There was no big castle in the area like the medieval one with square walls at Stier, near the Waldreich Mountains. Instead there was just the remains of one old tower that was now used as a support for local radio antenna.

But even with their low visibility they could see eight Su-47 with a three-tone grey camo and their trademark gold line on the leading edge of their wings. The Gault squadron. They obeyed him. They inverted their plane and bailed-out just over the lake. In this position it was particularly painful to be ejected and fall into a cold lake in October, but always better than shot down.

" They must have something wrong with their plane. It is just flying straight, almost non-harmonic. Strange for rogues." Gault 5 commented, trying to make the pursuit more realistic. This man, Egon Strauss, had some particular background: born in a composer family, he was not very attracted by classic music or modern one, but way more by "Schräge Musik".

" Don't worry, it won't be a problem. Gault 1, Feuer Fox 1s." Kupchenko fired two SAAMs toward the almost static F-15D. It exploded right on impact.

" No chute. They are dead." Perez added, as they pass above the shattered parts of the fighter.

" Gut." The BAH commander enjoyed this news.

But of course, the only thing they could have died from today was hypothermia, as the lake was pretty cold in this season. They slowly saw the Sukhois moving out to the south west, toward Tauberg. And soon after they were picked up by some Belkan CH-17. It brought them to their new place where they would receive new names: Cipher for the boy, as Fernando had the tendency to inverse the e and y in Zephyr, and Zveda for Freya. Kupchenko initially chose Zvezda for Hope in his grandfather's language, but she reduced it to Zveda, as it was easier to pronounce.

If they thought it would be a piece of cake to integrate the unit and moreover the project of Kupchenko, they were wrong. For weeks they had to go through a seemingly inhuman applied physics and air combat training schedule. Flying was great for them, as it meant being trained by none other than Gault team members, and even after some time doing little sparring session with them. However, their applied physics and engineering science part were led by a scientist named Hellenseite, and this guy was as merciful and tactical in his way of teaching these fields as Kupchenko's way of flying

But all of this was necessary. Kupchenko could not rely on their fighting skills alone. For him, they needed to understand how the engineer thinks and the process of aircraft conception to be able to master said aircraft. Kupchenko himself had an equivalent of an engineer diploma in aeronautical physics too, yet with a great major in project management. And today, it was with Karl Hellenseite that he was going to discuss the somewhat victory he obtained this morning.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 20/04/1995, 13:00.**

Kupchenko saw his pupils joining with the members of the Gault team, on the ground this day. With their hypersthene stock depleted, they couldn't do such raid like the one on Wesson. And with the great losses these mercs inflicted on the Belkan Air Force in this area, the whole air force was locked in a defensive role. His "Erbe" were even a bit sad as they explained to their brothers in arms the fight between Gault 1 and Galm 1, after a short debriefing in which he informed them that until further notice they would stay in their defensive area.

He couldn't help but feel sorry for them. He made a gamble and lost this one. Yet he still considered that this fight was as much a victory as a defeat. Even if he lost to this Erusean merc, his project won over the UCAVs. Of course, he could understand their sadness: for a simple pilot - even with a somewhat good level of skills and knowledge luggage - they only see the victory as their survival and the defeat of the enemy in this mission or in a set of missions. For him, victory was to achieve a goal, different of many involved in his war. But since when were goals achieved by a straightforward way. They seldom are so. Or just never were.

Still, this time they deserved to know. Even if he hadn't found the reason for this lock that shouldn't have worked in the first place. He could not respond much when Gault 8, Fernando Perez, asked with his worried sapin voice:

" Ma qué pasa in B7R, Señor Kupchenko?"

" Una Eruseanerine. But how she got that lock is a mystery to me currently." Kupchenko replied, before a Belkan scientist in white lab coat spoke out. He had little metallic rectangular glasses which gave him a strict gaze, but he had a left side hair parting was pretty much negating the seriousness his glasses created.

" It is not a mystery anymore, my friend. She used a secondary belly radar. Unconventional, but an easy way to extend the lock-on radius and angle of her plane." The scientist, whose name was labelled on his lab coat as Hellenseite, explained. If Kupchenko was the military tactician of their project, he was the scientific headmaster.

" Do you have any more intel on her tuned X-29A?" Kupchenko quickly followed, hoping to identify his enemy better. Identifying the enemy could be a pretty challenging task sometimes.

" I have. But this mere restroom is not the place for scientific explanations. If you may follow me." the scientist headed out the rest room on the upper level of a small building. There, they could see the pride of Kupchenko's Pendragon project.

" Mein Schaft und Erbe, sorgen sich nicht über meine Niederlage von heute (My team and heir, don't worry for my defeat of today). Of course, I regret this defeat over B7R, but we as warriors all know regrets sometimes. Yet they never defined me. We will succeed in the accomplishment of our task." Kupchenko tried to inspire his pilots, and from the smile that raised of the formerly sadden face he could say it had worked.

" You really know how to inspire people, my fellow tactician." Hellenseite agreed with the inner thoughts of Kupchenko, as they were walking through white alleys. From there they could see halls of different size, where most of the experiments of their mutual Pendragon project were done.

" I do. As a tactician they are all under my responsibility. They all trust me with their lives. What kind of leader would I be if I wasn't ready to put mine on the line?" Kupchenko confirmed, as they entered the "Meinungsausbildungsraum" or room where Hellenseite often exposed his crazy ideas to Kupchenko. One five-meter large blackboard composed of two one point five meter high slidable part, giving a total surface of roughly fifteen square meter of display. The other pieces of furniture in the room where a small desk and a few chairs.

" Ah, I always find your attachment to blackboard instead of video projector quite poetic, mein Lieber Karl"

" Everyone has is way of expressing arts. For your mens it's through Schräge Musik. For me it's through my design." He caught a few chalks and began drawing an X-29A with amazing speed, being used to draw all of its design on blackboard. It wasn't in perspective, but the three-view way of display was enough to show all sides of the craft.

Of course, anyone could take a picture of it. But in this era, espionage was more through computer-based technology than through real agent. Besides, Hellenseite had always authorized only two people to ever enter this room - himself and Kupchenko -. Every plan was transmitted by taking pictures of parts of the blackboard, and sent to their respective team than would study them and then produced blueprints for their parts by themselves. Despite being unorthodox, this method was a great way to reduce leaks.

The fighter was drawn in less than three minutes, during which they only heard the chalks sliding on the blackboard, with all the updates Hellenseite had deduced from all the pictures sent to him as Kupchenko was coming back from B7R. He even had the time to draw on the second part of the blackboard the EPM Ustian pilots used, making the lower part slide to put the modified X-29A in the now upper part of the blackboard.

Looking at the black part of this schematics, Kupchenko could recognize all the changes. The twin exhaust engine, the black canards and forward-swept wings, the belly radar. All these contingencies that had changed his well-planned battle-plan were now displayed. And new weaknesses to exploit would soon appear.

" I admit the maintenance crews in Valais must have worked hard on this one, considering the amount of damage her fighter suffered over Bayes." Hellenseite recognized the work of his adversaries.

" I do too. But I cannot allow myself to become complacent toward this merc. Any idea on how to bypass this threat, my crazy scientific Freund?" Kupchenko asked, and this put Karl Hellenseite in deep thoughts for a few seconds.

" Natürlich du kannst von oben angreifen. (Of course, you can attack from above)" The scientist quickly analyzed.

" She's got way too much reflexes to surprise her with some high ground tactics. But we are not going to meet again until some weeks, and this time I would be the one to choose my conditions." Kupchenko countered the idea of Hellenseite. There was a squadron stationed in Directus that love to do that. He was wondering how she would take them down.

" So, you imply Ustio will go this far. I wish them good luck to get a victory above Directus."

" All beings strive for victory. For mercs in B7R, survival is there motus operandi, their goal that once achieved define victory. For blind politicians who decided wars for polls or such thing, victory is just a mere advantage one can bring to a bargaining table. To a warrior, victory is driving an enemy from the field of battle or bringing him to surrender. Sometimes victory is greater than the warrior could ever hope for. Sometimes it is more than he is able to hear. And for this last reason my Erbe cannot consider today's fight as a victory yet. But for me it is." Kupchenko gave what was a cryptic answer for most people, but for Hellenseite it was crystal clear: their goal was reachable.

" I agree, the defeat of the UCAV project is our greatest victory since Wesson. " The scientist replied quickly. Unlike Kupchenko, he wasn't the inspirational kind of tactician, but more of the calculative one. And this operation was definitely resulting positively.

" Still, Luck won't be enough for what this Erusean merc will face next. And even if I don't shoot her down, there're still two way of destroying an enemy: kill or destroy her infallible reputation of victorious merc. Soon like all she will taste the bitter taste of Niederlage (defeat)." Kupchenko let a small laugh after this declaration, some cynic one that could give shivers to any warrior's spine. But not to Hellenseite, as he joined his laugh.

" Besides, the Merlin project has entered his launching phase. And if I can see that this Thesermeister manage to outsmart me with the counter he contributed to create against the MPBMs, there's no way they could dare, just dare think they would find any counter-measures against this new project." Karl added, knowing too well the devastating effect this new component of the Pendragon project will cause to any allied unit. And sometimes there are weapon you cannot counter but just run and watch desperately your allies dying in vain.

So, when the two mens came back from their little tactical talks, they offered a toast to all of their pilots, celebrating this new step of their secret project. They had maybe conceded a victory to the allied forces, but war was not over. And even if all contingencies went against him, he had now found something to say to those contingencies: "there's an if". The same phrase Galm 1 said as they began clashing with each other. But now Kupchenko would be the one choosing the factors, not the Ustians, not the Sapins, not even the Oseans who humiliated him long ago. All would taste defeat. And in the end, he would have his revenge, he finally thought as he emptied his glass of Radler, contemplating his achievement in this place.

 **End of Chapter. Well, I wanted to give a bit more depth to a character we have only some carving on some rock to express his mind. I suppose some will find the references to some aces here and there in this chapter, and to some tactician outside of Strangereal Galaxy. I didn't include Zephyr and Freya's escape because it will be worth a full chapter someday, even if this one is shorter than usual, but without any air combat it's hard to fill it. Feel free to review, like, comment (yeah I know for this website comment and review are the same thing but whatever) and subscribe.**

 **Minor grammatical errors fixed on 31/07/2019** , **and some more on the 11/1/20, including the designation of the twin-seater F-15D.**


	8. Chapter 4: Operation Juggernaut

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 24/04/1995, 10:00, Weather: high stratus.**

It was one of the days during which the entire valley could be seen from the bottom of the runway. For four days they had this freezing fog, and finally it was gone. But the weather was still freezing cold: the mountains surrounding the base were still covered in snow, and it would not melt until June at least. Of course, this change of weather meant that now any scout aircraft could see their base and its building from kilometers away, but since the last operation, Belka was on the defensive. Quite the opposite of their military doctrine, very Blitzkrieg-oriented.

Of course, the briefing room was a bit quieter, as the twin witches and Komyeta squadron weren't there. Still, they were surely receiving an identical briefing on the Osean carriers they were now stationed on. This time, the map was centered on a vital key in this war : Futuro canal, witch on its southern part was leading to the ocean that surrounded this continent while the northern section led to a small sea where a good third of the Belkan fleet was gathered, as the two other thirds were in the northern sea.

" The Ustio, Sapin and Osean coalition forces are now ready to launch a joint campaign. The collective strategic military force of the three armies will be referred to as the "Allied Forces". This campaign will be called "Offensive Campaign No. 4101". The objective of this operation is to secure a sea transit lane for the Allied Forces. To secure this channel, the Belkan forces occupying the Futuro Canal must be cleared out. Offensive Campaign No. 4101 will be comprised of the following three operations." Koenig began the briefing, as a long blue line was drawn through the fifteen-kilometer-long canal

"First, there is "Operation Gelnikos". This is an air-to-air/surface operation, whose objective is to wipe out Belka's air squadron, port facilities and surface weapons, among them BAWS and anti-ship cannons." He resumed to explain the operation, as the potential threats were recalled on small screens, with their estimated numbers and capacities.

" Next is "Operation Round Hammer". This is also an air-to-surface operation, whose objective is to wipe out the Belkan fleet led by the Njoldr supercarrier gathered in the North of the canal, its port facilities and surface weapons" Johnson displayed the estimated escort fleet of the Belkan ship. It was a huge one: 1 battleship, 4 TempestAngreiffSchiffe, 4 cruisers, a small dozens of destroyers and the same amount of frigates.

" And the last part of this Campaign is called "Operation Costner". This is an escort mission whose objective is to protect the naval vessels in Osea's 3rd fleet, including its state-of-the-art aircraft carrier, which the Osean top brass just decided that a full-scale war was a good trial voyage. Fierce resistance by Belkan forces is expected in all three operations." Kœnig ended, letting his sarcasm express without restrain. The Oseans could have just rearmed one of their aircraft-carriers instead of bringing a new.

" Does they know it need only one well-aimed heavy anti-ship missile to go down?" Pixy recalled, sharing the inner point of view of his commander.

" Well, maybe, as they gave it quite a lot of escort, and instead of getting new planes for the other three carriers, they set up on them dozens of SAMs and AA guns. It will be OK for them before or after the canal. But inside it would be very dangerous, as it's only one hundred meter wide. A single ship sunk in a bad angle and the whole operation could be jeopardized." Koenig summarized the whole point that could end up this very costly operation in mere seconds.

" I don't want to criticize Osean tactics, but how will we have enough ammo to take part in three different operations? I mean, I know I could try to land on their carrier, but it's a bit too risky even for my standards." Iskanda asked the question that was in everyone's mind.

" The Oseans have planned to take control of a small military airfield in the South East of the Futuro canal. To help with this the Gavilàn squadron and the Espada team have been sent by Sapin. You have already cooperated with them, Halo squad. I hope you'll get along just fine. Besides, the AWACS is coming with you." Koenig responded while zooming in on some runway at the East of the southern port facilities.

" Damned, we will have Vati watching our back." Fred dropped, trying to best the mood of the other pilot.

" Of course, Vati always watch the Frischling." Koenig replied with repartee, which caused some of the pilots to let some laugh.

This briefing was short. Yet the oncoming operation was going to be very long. First, they would have to travel from Valais to the fleet at the South of Futuro canal. But now they were just picking their weaponry, still adding two EPMs in the case of the unforeseen presence of one Wesson-UFO. Still, their ammo was very air-to-ground oriented : FAEBs for Iskanda's X-29A, UGBLs for the F-15Cs and half GPBs half SFFSs for Fred's F-15E, as the first often come in handy when dealing with light to medium ship without too much interceptions capacities, while the second were good to saturate enemy defenses.

The subject of those Wesson-UFOs they encountered over B7R was present in everyone's mind. Oseans satellites tracked them to the border and the Glatislant complexes, but couldn't track them further, as the satellites were suddenly destroyed by some kind of energy-based weaponry. This kind of events was common in war, but Osea had already lost 25% of their satellites. The remaining ones could always compensate for this loss, but now the whole Osean intelligence was slowly losing its capacities. And in modern warfare, identifying clearly the threat your soldiers were engaging was vital. Failures in this task could lead to tremendous events, or even catastrophes.

" Galm 1, you're clear for take-off." The control tower indicated.

" Roger, lift off." Her twin exhaust fully opened, and their thrust propelled her high in the sky.

And the three other fighters took off, followed by the E-767. Their bearing was simple: 225, the South West of Belka. "This day was going to be a very long one." Iskanda mused. Maybe they could rest a few minutes when their plane would be rearmed and refueled on the captured runway, but for now this thought was just a hope.

 **20 miles to the South of Futuro canal, 24/04/1995, 11:30.**

Komyeta 1 and 2 have been launched at 11:00 for patrol duties. And now they were waiting for the remains of the sixth Ustian Unit to get here to begin the whole operation. If Iskanda manage to best Kupchenko as she announced, her presence would be helpful for this battle.

A few minutes later, the four aircraft formation finally appeared on their radar, heading for the tankers Osea had sent to refuel them. Iskanda was slowly approaching from the probe, while Pixy, who was more used to this exercise, was already connected.

" So, Milady what can your personal waiter give you? Tea or coffee?" The technician of the tanker jokingly asked.

" Well, some good mint tea would be good. It's said to be good against boredom, and my plane is getting bored when I'm not shooting something." She replied with a small laugh, just after she connected with the probe.

" Roger. Good luck for today. If you survived drinks are on me on your way back to Ustio." The technician wished her, as she disconnected and dived toward the see, with little contrails creating on the tip of her wing as she dived.

" Do not worry. I've survived B7R so this whole operation should be nothing more a walk in the park." She retorted as they were making their approach to the South of Futuro canal.

They weren't the only one to go. Over members of the Halo squad had join them, along with some Osean F/A-18Cs and EA-6B Prowlers armed with LAGM instead of their usual jamming pod for CAS, respectively in two-tone light grey and dark brown camo. The Komyeta squadron quickly joined the nearly twenty aircraft squadron. As they were entering the zone of operation, they could even see the EC-665s and EC-685s taking off, who would take action in the taking of the airfield they planned to refuel and rearm in it.

 **South of Futuro canal, Belka, 24/04/1995, 11:35, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

Even if she was gliding toward the Belkan forces at low altitude, she could see the dozen of J35J Draken that was heading toward their group. It was not a serious threat for the fighters, but it was enough to endanger the Prowlers. Yet for an unknown reason the Belkan fighters decided to stay over the harbor facilities.

" I know you want to protect that fleet behind us, Galm 1. I have learned to read your intentions." Pixy said, as the fleet behind them was waiting for the surface weapons to be destroyed to begin their advance.

" I won't stop unless this sea is turned red by the blood of Belkans." She replied with some sick joy kind of laugh.

The justification to this illogical choice by the Belkans came thirty seconds later, when the F/A-18Cs equipped with SODs tried to fire their missiles, but a few seconds after they released them the radar went grey.

" Warning, heavy ECMs!" The AWACS warned them, but too late. Having lost their guidance, some of the SOD slammed into the sea, while others were shot down by either the local SPKs or the numerous Belkan fighters.

" Try to track the position of the jammers, and we should launch a coordinate saturation attack while you Ustians cover us." The leader of the Prowlers said, as the overall allied strike force was closing on the facilities on the eastern coast of Futuro canal.

" This is Eagle Eye, displaying jammers. But long-range cams indicate it's highly fortified, so maybe one attack will not be enough to destroy them."

" We won't let you destroy them. This is our ocean, Oseans!" A F-20A Tigershark pilot said, as he managed to get behind a F/A-18C, using low flying and their jamming.

" From where is he coming?" Asked the very pilot of the soon-to-be-shot Hornet. He couldn't see a thing on his radar, and his thermal sensors have been set for ground duties, not to track low flying crafts.

The Osean tried to go in passive radar in order to find the source of the Belkan craft if they tried to lock them. The thing was Belkan resorted to "Schräge Musik", a tactic that was born in the second Osean-Belkan war, as the first onboard radar appeared, and were usually positioned at the front of the craft. They would climb from behind the enemy craft after bypassing them, then unleash a deadly burst of cannons or machine guns on the rear belly of the enemy craft. Even a A-10A, the most armored fighter ever, couldn't resist to such attack if it was properly made. And as gun kill did not require radar, the Oseans only saw them too late, as they were attacked.

" I'm hit! Going down." The very pilot of the Hornet said, while his aircraft was torn off by a Tigershark.

" Go feed meinen Bruder Hai below, you dumb Osean." The Belkan which downed him said, before accelerating toward the leader of the Prowler unit.

He was joined in his attack by two other F-20As. If the Ustians were lucky thanks to their more agile fighters and didn't suffer anything but a few hits on the left wing of Morgana's F-14D, but it was nothing she couldn't recover, as she extended them to their max, making her pursuer overshoot her, and downing him with a pair of standard missiles, the Oseans suffered massive casualties. From the six Prowler and six Hornets only a few of them survived and only by the skin of their teeth. Among them two Prowler were pursued by three Tigersharks. Yet their fate wasn't sealed.

Iskanda, which had the luck to see her attacker coming thanks to her belly radar, waited for almost the last second before pulling her head-to-tail-like maneuver. She went a few instants in red sight but was able to evade the "Schräge Musik'' of the Belkan Draken by barrel-rolling. Just after they crossed their path, she extended her airbrakes fully, which caused the "structural integrity alarm" to blare and her whole plane to vibrate as she was stalling, but she was used to recovering stalls with such an unstable aircraft. The J35J tried to flee by hitting the burner but was damaged by a SAAM of Fred's F-15E, and as it was slowed, the X-29As performed a good Schräge Symphony on him. The bullets went through the turbine of his engine, and he exploded five second later. But as Iskanda was climbing after doing some zig zag to avoid the blast of the downed aircraft, she saw the two threatened EA-6Bs and instantly dived toward them.

" Damned, we are going to be toasted soon if nothing happened." The co-pilot of one pursued Prowler said, as he was dumping chaff and flares to disrupt the Belkan locks, but they couldn't outrun the fighter in their jammer/CAS airplane.

" Well I don't know if toast with shark fins are good, but I can always try." A vengeful Iskanda said, dashing right on the two threatened EA-6Bs.

" Hurry then, miss." Another Osean pilot screamed, as his co-pilot dumped flares a bit too late, and some shrapnels resulting from the collision of a QAAM and a pair of standard missiles hit them hard. They lost stability for one second, along with a bit of their alarm missile system.

" Just keep flying straight. I'm coming in. PC max." She ordered, as she pushed the throttle stick to its peak. She was pushed back by the G-forces, but those G-forces were almost something she liked to feel, even if they induced little sufferance.

" What is she gonna do?" A lightly scared Prowler pilot wondered, as he saw the X-29A coming in hot head-on on his craft, without making any maneuver to circumvent them.

" Oh, don't worry Pal, I had the chills the first time she pulled that, but I survived in the end" Fred ensured them, remembering the crazy maneuver this Erusean merc pulled against those YF-23s.

" Ok then." The Osean accepted his unknown fate. The X-29A didn't slow a single bit. It just tilted on the roll axis, on a ninety-degree angle. Last time she did that it was at medium altitude in the Valaisian Alps. But doing so at sea level was way more difficult, as the air right above the sea was filled with light turbulences. And at full speed, she passed through the two-plane formation, keeping her plane tilted, with her tail gliding just a few inches below the wing of the plane at her right.

" What was that?" The Osean co-pilot gasped, amazed by the sheer craziness this merc possessed to pull out such maneuver.

And then she quickly dispatched two of the pursuing planes by gun bursts, killing the one at her one o'clock before doing a semi barrel-roll to avoid a pair of missiles fired head on. Arriving still in a ninety-degree angle relative to horizon, but inverted, she just had to curve her path a bit to have the second F-20A in her sight and fire. Then she leveled her plane, and still without squeezing the exhaust, she passed below the last Tigershark, as a pair of QAAMs was leaving the pylons of the latter, only to hit the water. The Belkan pilot had believed for a time his QAAMs would be successful, but before he realized his mistake, he only had the time to take a glimpse at this X-29A's trajectory, as it slowed down to perform an Himmelman. And this time, he took a full Schräge Symphony from above instead of below like usual.

" Good, thank you very much Galm 1." The two Osean survivors congratulated her, as she passed above them to engage other fighters.

The remaining fighters to shot down were no more a very numerous forces though. As she was saving those Prowlers, the combined efforts of the other sixth Unit members permitted to save two F/A-18Cs and one more Prowler. A few minutes after, the dogfight had ended, with each member bagging two or three kill among the nearly twenty Belkan interceptors.

" Sky is clear on thermal sensors. CAS planes and Hornets, we have tracked the jamming signal. However, you can just lock onto them, not their defenses around." Eagle Eye indicated, and the four jammers, two on each side of the canals were displayed on the HUD of every pilots still alive of the strike force.

" Roger. Any plane who has cluster weapon or rockets, fired them on our mark." The Osean leader of the CAS plane suggested.

The sixth Unit pilots agreed with this suggestion quickly, and in a few seconds two strike forces were constituted. On one hand three Prowler and one F-15E, and on the other hand the two Su-33 and the two surviving Hornets. Ten seconds later, a helluva number of rockets, SFFSs, LAGMs and LASMs hit the enemy position. If the jammers were not destroyed in the first attack, it knocked out enough defenses to silence them permanently on the second pass.

" Radar is back to normal. All units, resume your initial duties and destroy the surface weapons." The AWACS ordered as they scattered to hunt the tanks, howitzers and their AA artillery who tried to hide amongst the oil tanks or behind containers ship but were easily tracked by the allied forces and destroyed at a quick pace. This operation was going to end well, but if it was a perspective on the Osean losses, they would be high at the end of the battle.

The four final main targets revealed themselves to be four giant howitzers similar to the ones Halo 5 and 7 fought against in Sapin. They were two of them on each side of the canal. And just one of them could wreak havoc into the allied naval forces, if they get in range. The first two on the West side succumb to two waves of LAGMs et LASMs. But they did not go down without causing damage to the allied air forces, due to the great number of tripleAs and SPKs surrounding them. Especially the EA-6Bs which had come dangerously close of the AA artillery suffered heavy hits, forcing them to retreat with black smoke pouring out of their exhausts. The Su-33 which helped saturate the close range guns with their rockets suffered some hits on their engine, but even if they couldn't use their vectored nozzles any more they were still combat-worthy, unlike the two retreating Prowlers, who would have a pretty bad time at landing on their carrier.

" Damned, the CAS plane are out of commission. What are we gonna do mister Eagle Eye?" One of the Osean pilot of Hornets said.

" Well, the Gavilàn squadron is in route to take control of the airfield, and their EC-665s can carry LAGMs. Just make sure to have aerial superiority before they arrived." The AWACS suggested they wait for the Sapin chopper squadron, but the Belkan reinforcements did not seem to agree with them. Their squadron was composed of a dozen F-16Cs in a dark oversea blue camo with rows of white lightnings painted below them.

" Sturm Schaft, let's shoot them down. And after we will avenge the Dschungel squadron by taking down these choppers."

" Ver" his wingmen replied.

And they all launched one or two XMAAs on the allied forces, who avoided them all. The Belkans were not so lucky at avoiding the retaliation of the Hornets XMAAs and the F-14Ds XLAAs, as the loss of jamming added to the AWACS presence was boosting their radar performances. Still, eight of them survived, and they were as murder thirsty as Iskanda now.

" Sturm Schaft, no mercy. If necessary, take them down with you."

" Sturm drei Ver. Attacking Galm 1." The pilot thought his encrypted line was still encrypted to the enemy pilots.

" That's not very strategic, to give your target a warning." Iskanda said and dashed head-on toward her attacker.

" I'm just ritterlich (chivalrous)." He tried to justify his mistake. The two aircraft exchanged a pair of missiles, but without great result, as both of them had small fighters which possessed a slightly low front thermal signature.

He accelerated to get a range for a gun kill faster, but his bursts were only shot for trash, as the X-29A did a little but fast dive before reclimbing just below him.

" Ritterlichkeit only get you killed in battle, du Dummkopf!" Iskanda exclaimed herself, while gunning the Falcon.

" Gott Verdammt, diese Fräulein ist der Teufel (God Damn'it, this woman is the devil) !" The Belkan she had just engaged head-on commented, as he saw her coming for him but avoiding his fire with amazing ease, the X-29A flying tilted and swinging between the XMAAs and the standard missiles the Fighting Falcon fired despite their inefficiency at killing her. He managed to avoid partially a frontal gun attack, but was hit on his right wing, making him nearly enter a stall due to the instability it created. And while recovering, he didn't realize she was already on him and finished him with a pair of missiles.

" Sturm vier, zwei, mit mir. Abschießen diese Söldnerin!" (Thunder 4,3 with me. Shot down this she merc) Their leader ordered, and soon Iskanda was pursued by three Falcons. Pixy tried to help her, but by turning in her direction he flew right toward the bright sun and was blinded for a second. And in one second a F-16C manage to sneak on his six, rendering his tries at helping his leader impossible.

And if the two other F-16Cs where dispatched by the F-14Ds, the battle took a new turn when they saw Typhoons taxiing out of their hangar on the base they were supposed to attack. They hadn't expected EF-2000 on this battlefield, as they were non carrier-compatible aircrafts. So, all fighters but the Galm team hit the burners to take them down before they took off.

If Iskanda was indeed pursued, she was still in good shape and unharmed, flying erratically to avoid the enemy fire, before entering in a climb. She wasn't planning to stall-climb them, but her idea was far funnier.

" Do you think she can outclimb us leader? I mean, she outclimbed Gault 1." Sturm vier pointed out, as they were following her in her climb.

" Don't worry, let her climb a bit before acting." His leader ensured them with a false feeling of confidence.

" Overconfidence. Even Kupchenko fell before me. So Ihr werdet." Iskanda mocked them, as they let her the freedom to outrun them vertically for a few seconds, and thus to execute her vicious plan.

She made her head-to-tail-like maneuver vertically, which was quite painful, as gravity added itself to the G-forces. She ended up falling on their twelve hours from above. They reacted by firing their XMAAs, which were avoided with ease, as firing them vertically had a tendency of slowing them down. As she was getting closer to them at a very quick pace, she fired two unlocked missiles on one, before barrel-rolling to avoid the retaliation of the aircraft in the middle. Luckily, and due to the fact that her standard missiles were on pylons and not fired from bays, her shots hit, and the F-16C was shattered in a million's pieces. She then curved her trajectory in order to end up outside of the firing arc of the F-16C at her right. Her body would not be happy to feel so much G-forces in such a short period of time, but war wasn't made to preserve anybody. She tilted her aircraft at a ninety angle, this positioning her right in front of the right fuselage of her enemies. The whole X-29A was shaken by vibration as she leveled the craft for a bunch of seconds, and during this brief moment she opened fire on the F-16Cs, but the lead craft - the one in the middle - was just barely hit while the right one was set ablaze, the bullet having gone through his fuel tanks and engine.

However, while she internally cursed as she could just see the F-16C resuming his vertical climb, she lost her lift and her plane fall backward to the see, as the rotation on her pitch axis wasn't stop when she had fired. Her whole body crushed by the G-forces, she pushed - this time with some difficulties to even move her arm - the throttle stick to "PC max".

The F-16C resumed his climb for another reason than just to escape. His rudders and flaps have been torn off by the bullets, and now if he tried to move just a single bit, he would end up stalling like this Erusean merc. He thought she was going to meet her end in some geyser of steam and metallic pieces, as he saw her falling backward to the ocean, but her craft seemed to be stuck between the forces of gravity and thrust. Her fall was slowing, and then again, she survived just by the skin of her teeth. He thought for a hopeful moment that she had finally hit the surface and explode, causing a small cloud of steam, but it was just the ablaze fuel of the post-combustion that was causing this little fog.

She had thought too that she would die this time. But no. Her twin engine managed to negate the fall just mere decimeters above the water line, causing the water below her to evaporate. Then thrust finally won over gravity as she dashed toward the sky, catching with the damaged Fighting Falcon in no time.

" Es ist nicht möglich. Wie hat sie diesen Abbruch überwindet?" (It's not possible. How did she recover from this stall?) The Sturm leader freaked out, and let panic take over him. He tried to dive on her to took her down with him, but before he could enact his plan, she had already caught him and sent a pair of missiles.

" Good, Sturm squadron has been defeated. How about those taxiing EF-2000s?" One of the Osean pilot asked, at least a bit impressed by the skills of their new allies.

" Well, they did not have the time to launch many Typhoons. We hit half of them before they could make out to the first runway and gunned down the other half as they were taking off." The calm voice of Thesermeister described the aftermath of this little fight.

" We are happy to see the efficiency of our allies. Gavilàn squadron, release your missiles." The Sapin leader ordered, and four LAGMs were launched toward the Belkan howitzer. They didn't reduce them to rubble instantaneously but a well-aimed FAEB dropped by Iskanda finished the job, the shockwave blowing the big barrels into tiny bits of metal.

" This is captain Weeker onboard the Kestrel. Surface artillery removed. Sent the assault choppers." A semi-old Osean voice ordered.

" Eagle Eye to all planes, cover them while they are cleaning your runway. You'll need it to attack the fleet at the North." The operator transmitted, as the three EC-685s were entering the operation zone. The black irregular shaped of the twin-rotor transport chopper was very noticeable above the sea, and the few SAMs and AAguns that survived went all out to destroy them.

But their efforts were only in vain, as they were picked up by the Allies fighter and destroyed in no time as soon as they left their relative cover. And when even one managed to reach a point where he was at firing range, his shots were trashed by the SPKs mounted on the side of the Sapin chopper. The few Belkan APCs were fleeing or burning, and soon the Osean and Sapin commandos were dropped by the EC-685s. The fighters could do nothing more than just watch, as their weaponry was not precise enough to take down single soldier on the ground.

And five minutes later, all Belkan forces had been silenced. Some Osean C-130 Hercules then landed to deploy their own SAMs and tripleAs on the ground. Another good news was heard, as some of the Allied aircraft were landing to refuel, Iskanda and Pixy among them, as they had a bit overused their exhausts lately, and it always increased fuel consumption: the Espada team had arrived and was being refueled in mid-air.

" So, Que Pasa, Sapins?" Fred asked to the Sapin team they fought alongside them last week.

" Some low flying stealth caught us by surprise. But we manage to shoot down these three YF-23s." Espada 1 answered, as he was connecting his aircraft with the tanker, as he had let his wingmen refuel first.

" These stealth pilots often forget that opening their bays negate stealth in visual range." Espada 2 commented, as her Rafale was moving toward the North of the Futuro canal.

" Good to see you're carrying LASMs today. Ready to send ship to the bottom I guess?" Francis noticed, as he saw their long shape below the Rafale.

" I'm sure I can do the same with my FAEBs." Iskanda affirmed, as she was taking off from the temporary base. Her pause had been very short, and she was only reloaded in missiles and guns, as the Hercules doesn't bring her any more thermobaric ordnance.

" We can find that quick. Who will sunk the greatest number of ships?" Johnson said, even if a Rafale M was way more oriented to air-to-ship tactics than a X-29A, but Galm 1 usually surprised them - most of the time in the good way hopefully-.

" So, you're Galm 1. Nice to meet you." Espada 2 saluted the Erusean merc as the tuned X-29A caught up with her.

" Well, thanks Espada 2. We have a fleet to sink people, let's go and sent them to Neptune." Iskanda tilted her airplane to face the Rafale at her right, before diving toward the canal and leveling at the last second.

" All aircrafts follow Galm 1. Go to the North. Operation Round Hammer is on the way." The AWACS ordered, and all plane lowered their altitude to just above sea level, crossing the canal without any interference. If they crossed the canal this easy, then the Osean third fleet would have no problem, Johnson thinks, as an Osean U2 sent him the picture of the Belkan fleet, confirming the known numbers, but revealing the few ships and more important submarines which were docked right now. They would need to destroy them ASAP, as not a single of their fighters had anti-submarine capacities.

 **North of Futuro canal, Belka, 24/04/1995, 12:00, Weather: outcast.**

The allied forces, reinforced by the Espada team, had now reached the North of the canal, where the Njoldr Belkan supercarrier and its fleet were stationed. Some AA guns and SAMs were set on a bridge, but the GPBs which were carried by the F-14Ds destroyed the anchor point of the cables of the bridge. And as the cables went loose, the bridge started to crumble, and collapsed a few dozen second later, plunging the Belkan artillery into the cold water.

" This canal is the key to Ustio's liberation. Failure is not an option." The AWACS reminded, as the group of fighters was dividing in two halves to attack the naval forces on each side of the canal.

Iskanda and Pixy decided to stick with Espada and Komyeta team and go to the West. The other half went to the East. Four frigates and one submarine were stationed were Iskanda chose to attack. She dropped a FAEB between two frigates, neutralizing their AA guns and setting one of them ablaze. She finished the other with a missile right at sea level. A little time before she attacked, she had saw the Rafale launching one of his massive LASMs. And now it impacted the submarine, tearing it in half. The last frigate was destroyed by Pixy which did a perfect dive bombing, going vertically before leveling quickly, like the Stukas of past times.

" Damned, they are already here? They are in advance on our prediction, but we are still in the margin of error." A Belkan said, before being interrupted by the sound of a strong explosion, as a volley of rockets fired by the Su-33s wreaked havoc among the facilities, setting oil tanks in flames, and many tanks and AA guns which tried to hide among the said facilities were engulfed in bright flames.

" You have made a deadly error, Belkans. Underestimate the strength of us merc." Pixy replied, while gunning an APC which had tried to get some cover behind some tents surrounded by AA guns, which were reduced to shreds by rockets fired by Espada 1's J35J. If they were less spread than the ones the Sea Flankers carried, they packed a little more punch.

The fighters kept bombing the facilities, reducing anything they identified as Belkan to rubble. On the eastern coast of the canal, numerous containers-carriers were now burning, or torn apart by the explosion of the ammo they were carrying. And the oil tanks were just broken cylinder of metal darkened by the flames. Some AA guns were still active, but all the SAMs have been disabled. And only five minutes after the beginning of their bombing, ground victory was achieved.

" Ground troops have been destroyed. Now attack the fleet at the North." The AWACS confirmed the utter destruction of Belkan ground forces in the area. Maybe a tent or a lonely APC could have survived, but there was no more threat to the naval forces when they would occupy the canal.

" Roger, this is Galm team, we are engaging the enemy fleet." Iskanda said, as she turned her way to bearing 0.

" Advanced scout fleet detected. Firing anti-ship missile." An Osean F/A-18C pilot reported, followed by the other Hornet pilot and Espada 2. Two destroyers and one cruiser were sunk, and their escort frigates were bombed by the Ustian F-15Cs.

Yet the main enemy fleet they were about to face was even greater than the last satellite observations had shown. Seven destroyers deployed in an arrow formation were forming its front, while the back was comprised of five cruisers. And in the middle of this, in a lozenge-shaped formation, two Belkan Aegis were flanking a massive dreadnoughts of an unknown type, which featured two separated isle equipped with eight large caliber cannons on two turrets, complemented by AA guns around the main canons, along with SAM and an impressive number of SPKs, but the most surprising part was the flat surface between the two isle, which seemed to hide something. This area of the ship was large enough to fit the new Belkan defense system now known and feared as BAWS. And behind the dreadnought was the Njodr, the pride of the southern Belkan fleet, a 400-meter-long supercarrier with the unique capacity to launch three Hornets at the same time. Indeed, as they approached, they could see that the Hornets were launched at a terrific pace.

"Wait, these Hornets are not like mine." An Osean pilot said, as his radar was tagging them as Growlers.

" It's because the Njoldr is carrying F/A-18Es refitted for carrier purposes. According to intel they do not possess the strong jamming capacities, but they had enhanced targeting for both air-to-air and air-to-see." The other Osean Hornet pilot justified this little radar issue.

" Well, watch out for those "Super Hornets" kind of and for BAWS launch." The AWACS warned, as the bays of the Belkan TempestAngreiffSchiffe were opening, followed by the three on the dreadnought, revealing themselves to the pilots.

" Roger." The pilots responded, and had to slow their approach, making numerous maneuvers to avoid the oncoming missiles.

" This is the Thunderhawk squadron of the eight Osean Unit. We were supposed to be deployed next month, but it seems you need some fire support here." The leader of eight F-35Cs with a two-tone dark blue paint job said, as they were coming through the canal. Their additional fire was enough to send to the bottom five of the seven destroyers, and damage two cruiser and one TempestAngreiffSchiffe.

Yet it come with a great cost: six of them were shot down, along with one of the surviving Osean Hornet, and the J35J Draken and the Su-33s were retreating, having suffered heavy damage trying to fire their rockets to saturate the Belkan defenses, but they only managed to take down a BAWS on the dreadnought. And the destroyed systems were closed immediately, sealing the nascent fire onboard the Belkan ship.

And the two others were shot down by the over numerous Belkan Growlers in a pale blue camo with yellow stripes among their wings and fuselage. This remind Pixy of the tattoo of the warrior hornet on Iskanda's neck. And they were as agile and painful to shot down as warrior Hornets were. Furthermore, their very emblem was composed of three oversized blue Hornets piercing a sparrow with harpoons. Even if Francis managed to drop a GPB on the carrier deck, damaging its catapults, the Belkan naval operators had managed to launch an impressive number of twenty-four of those "Super Hornets".

" Damn, those pesky Hornets are swarming us." Pixy said, evading another nth attack from multiple angles, without having the time to retaliate. This time he managed to launch a pair of missiles to a cruiser while diving to evade some XMAAs, but the modified F/A-18Es were closing on him at each second that passed. Iskanda wasn't lucky either for once, having downed only three of them but at the cost of some gun hits on her right engine, which reduced the capacities of her afterburners. Vasquez, Espada 2, tried to launch her LASMs while evading, but she didn't have the time to get proper lock, and ended up firing two missiles for trash.

" It's going to take hours." Johnson mused, as he saw the two fighting forces entangled in fierce dogfight, with the Belkan forces outnumbering the allied forces. From times to times some Osean F-14Ds and F-4ES arrived by little groups of 4 or 6 fighters, only to be torn off by the Belkan fighters or the powerful anti-air batteries of the remaining two cruiser, one TAS ship and of course the dreadnoughts surrounding the carrier. The Belkan naval forces were surely diminished but were still too much of a threat for the third fleet which did not possessed any heavier ship than their Osean Aegis-class destroyers.

Now there were only seven Allied fighters, with Francis having to retreat after a painful dive-bomb on the cruiser. He managed to drop two of his UGBLs and two missiles on the enemy ship but was badly hit on its wing and ailerons. He almost crash landed when landing on the temporary base, his front tire pierced by Belkan lead. And there were still eighteen Belkan F/A-18Es, outnumbering the allied by almost three to one, forcing the allied to do evasive maneuvers and tried to find openings in the fierce Belkan defensive net of SPKs and BAWS.

" I've got an idea." Iskanda shared with the other pilots, as she pulled a head-to-tail-like maneuver to send to trash some XMAAs but couldn't retaliate as another Belkan craft attack them from her eight hours.

" What kind of idea?" the only Osean pilot left asked.

" The I do not think it will work but in the end it can work kind of idea?" Pixy guessed, knowing Iskanda not to be a tactician, still some of her tactics ended up pretty well.

" Yeah, this kind of stuff. Try to be followed by as many enemy craft as possible. Then follow me." She cleared her plan up, however not giving all the details to confuse a bit the Belkans, if they listened to their radio for once.

" Do what she proposed, we're kind of stuck here." Eagle Eye agreed to the almost unknown strategy, and this due to the fact that Osean numbers didn't seem to work against Belkan advanced fighters.

Iskanda begin her run toward the waypoint on her HUD, getting tracked by three F/A-18Es. On her way toward it, she began typing at her onboard computer, trying to change one very important parameter of her current armament to her idea. An idea that came through her mind, as she thought about her previous engagement above B7R.

And fifteen second later, the entire allied strike force - or what was left of it to be more precise- were climbing close to her, with almost a good dozen F/A-18Es on their tail. Then she decided to strike.

" Beginning primary ignition." She let this cryptic signal, even if she wasn't talking about a laser but a earthlier weapon. She pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver, and dive toward the enemy formation about 1km lower than her, and then readied the release mechanism. She went through the enemy formation while slowing down a bit, then did a second head-to-tail maneuver and as she was climbing again, she pressed the release mechanism, in the middle of this vertical loop, before dashing toward the sea at full speed.

But as her plan was going to work perfectly, the last Osean F/A-18C was struck by an XMAA and fall into a spin, exactly five seconds after Iskanda.

" I'm hit. But I think I can reco..." His voice was cut like almost all the Belkan voices as the two FAEBs Iskanda dropped just exploded in mid-air

Sadly for the Osean seven seconds was the time she set for her dropped FAEBs to explode. And they explode perfectly, catching a great number of their pursuers in their blasts, and the one that survived it were damaged enough to be taken down easily by the Ustian crafts. Yet FAEBs were blind weapon and they blindly reduced to dust not only eleven F/A-18Es, but sadly an Osean F/A-18C. A blue on blue.

" Was passiert? Report, jetzt!" The captain of the dreadnought, and chief of this fleet asked, as the sky was set ablaze. He had seen the propaganda image of the thermobaric explosion above Wesson, so he understood quickly what was happening. However, the how was a mystery for a few more seconds.

" Galm 1, Blue on Blue." The Kestrel CIC informed, as the dust of the twelve aircraft was now dispersed by the wind.

" What have you done, Galm?" Johnson asked with a worried voice, shocked by the horrific incident.

" I… kind of set my bomb to mimic the MPBMs the Wesson-UFOs are carrying. I couldn't foresee this pilot would be hit and fall into the blast radius!" She stammered before ending up almost screaming. For her point of view, she wasn't responsible of his death. But if sometimes the pilots on the battlefield have a more restrained point of view on the operation than the commanding officer, sometimes it could be the other way around.

" End justify means, Weeker." Pixy argued for his leader, as he was downing a very damaged Growler, which had been punctured on all its right wing and fuselage.

" This is not the time to treat this incident. I take responsibility for the action of my pilots, Weeker." The stern voice of Koenig cut the talk and reminded all of them that this very incident did not end the operation, only shortened it.

" We shall see, admiral Koenig. We shall see." Weeker replied with a harsh voice, not willing to admit the inferiority of his pilots toward the Belkans and the Ustian mercs.

" Sir, I have a message from Yuktobania. They announced at 12:00 at the Assembly of Nations that they would join the allied forces. And they have sent an Antonov 225 armed with heavy anti-ship missile." A forty-year-old officer by the name of Anderson said.

" Finally, some good news. Shoot down the remaining Belkan fighters, and then we will be able to cross this canal."

" Roger." the Ustian pilots responded, still a bit silent after the incident.

All pilots could see the massive aerial shape of the An-225, Belkan like Ustians. The Belkans dashed toward the transport, reaching a velocity of Mach 2, a speed way further the limitation of the common F/A-18E. Only Pixy's and Francis' Eagle could catch up with them, and they only had the time to shoot down one each before a volley of XLAAs destroyed the last two Belkan attackers. Apparently the Yukte craft didn't come here alone but was escorted by three MiG-31s Foxhound.

" Lei parla Oseani?" Pixy asked, as they joined the escort of Foxhounds which had a two-tone grey camo on the upper part of their Migalevs with a white under part, and all of them had red five branch stars on each wing, along with the Yukte roundels.

" Da. We are the Red Star squadron. Protecting a Matr bomb." Red Star 1 answered, revealing what was the long missile attached below the Antonov's belly.

" What's a Matr bomb?" Iskanda wondered, hoping they wouldn't resort to the use of nuclear torpedoes to end this naval fight.

" Just the biggest classic thermobaric ordnance without hypersthene. Almost as powerful as a ten-kilogram nuke." Their AWACS cleared out the doubt about the nature of this weapon.

The massive missile was ignited as they arrived at fifteen kilometers away from the Belkan fleet. It flew close to the water, quickly reaching a hypersonic speed thanks to its cryogenic liquid propellant engine. The Belkan knew that they did not have any chance to intercept such a massive missile, even with the BAWS. So, the order issued was simple: evacuation.

" That's weird, Belkan ships have released a great number of escape pods." Their AWACS transmitted, as small ships were projected by all ships, ensuring them a quick evacuation before this enemy they couldn't fight.

" That's a first, Belkan evacuating. Next time they are going to surrender without us having to even threaten them if it kept that way." Pixy nodded how unorthodox and opposed to Belkan pride this maneuver was.

Yet not all personnel have been evacuated on the dreadnought. The captain and a few officers were readying their last stand. The Matr bomb wouldn't spare them, and not leave them any chance to survive the explosion. But some Osean ships would not survive either.

" We can consider operation Round Hammer as a pyrrhic success. All aircrafts, fall back and protect the third fleet as they cross Futuro canal." The AWACS indicated, fully counting their high number of disabled aircraft and even higher number of destroyed allied forces - more than thirty in total-.

" All aircraft, begin operation Costner." Weeker ordered.

 **Middle of Futuro canal, Belkan water, 24/04/1995, 12:10, Weather: outcast.**

They all see the bright flash as the Matr bomb exploded. Of course, it was a "clean" thermobaric bomb, but the area of damage and the light it produced make them think more to an atomic explosion. The four remaining ships of the Belkan southern fleet vanished in a giant geyser of water and metallic parts. However, the Belkan teams that chose to stay on the dreadnought had the time to launch their final onslaught against the allied naval forces. And soon it became visible to everyone in the vicinity.

" This is Eagle Eye; we have a hypersonic anti-ship missile incoming on the fleet. Estimated time of impact with the Kestrel, thirty seconds." Johnson announced, and all ships began firing their anti-air missiles to destroy this threat. But the Belkan missile dropped a huge cloud of flares, and the anti-air missiles of the Osean Aegis were shot for trash.

And as it accelerated, the front of the missile began to glow with a light electric violet color, as the air friction was ionizing the air around the missile. The MiG-31s obviously rushed, trying to intercept the missile, but the sparks born of the plasma created by the hypersonic missile disrupted their XLAAs, when they were not simply destroyed in mid-air. Pushing their engines to their peaks, they tried to gun it, but the ionized air coupled to the steam pouring out of the missiles' engine almost created an artificial thunder. Thus, their gun fire triggered the nascent thunder, and then two of the three MiG-31 were sent ablaze by the lightnings, while the third lost control and managed to crash land in the coast line.

Obviously the Aegis sent again a volley of long range anti-air missiles, but either their tracking was disrupted by the growing plasma bubble around the missile, or even if they reached the plasma, the lightnings born of it were so strong they either destroyed or even disintegrated the powerless projectiles.

" I'm trying with EPMs." Pixy said, launching two of his electromagnetic pulse missiles as the missile was halfway to the Kestrel, guessing that something creating electricity could be affected by magnetic pulses. However, Pixy could not know that plasma had some very specific electromagnetic properties.

The well-aimed pulse weaponry was activated at just mere meters of the hypersonic Belkan missile. The plasma surrounding the missile change a bit in color, glowing from a light purple to a very pale bright blue, but nothing happened. The missile was continuing its inexorable path toward the Osean fleet.

" Warum es funktioniert nicht?" Pixy gasped, as the EPMs seemed to leave the Belkan missile unarmed.

"Plasma has a skin effect on high frequency electromagnetic waves. For this very reason it negates almost all weapon based on electromagnetic waves." Thesermeister explained, as he was coming back from repairs.

" Does your skin effect affect mechanical shockwaves?" Iskanda curiously asked, as she was on a course to cross path with the missile.

" Well, no. Here the air turned into plasma should be dense enough to conduct the shockwave without too much dispersion. Why are you asking this, Galm 1?" Valentin didn't understand the whereabouts of this physical problematic.

" Gut. So now I'm warning your guys, Weeker. Destroyer of the advanced fleet, stop your advance." Iskanda tried to reduce the damage she knew she was going to cause.

" Negative. You're not in position to issue order to an Osean ship, merc!" The captain responded bluntly, not willing to stop their charge toward Belkan territory.

" Verdammt iron-headed Oseans. You won't say i did not warned you this time." She exclaimed, angry at the stubborn Osean officer, as she dived, on a path anticipating the one of the hypersonic Belkan missile. And dropped two FAEBs again, hoping that their powerful shockwaves would destroy the said Belkan missile. She then climbed out as fast as her half-destroyed exhaust allowed, waiting for five seconds as the hypersonic missile was closing on the area where her thermobaric ordnance was already dispatching its highly volatile fuel it contained: chlorine trifluoride.

"What is she doing? Close all ports. Immedia…." The voice of the commander of the destroyer was cut, not by the explosion of the FAEBs, which only neutralized their batteries without destroying the whole ship, as some officers decided to slow down their ship to reduce the damage, following reason rather than protocol.

What cut his voice was the explosion of the hypersonic missile, as the powerful twin shockwaves went through the plasma that surrounded it, making the explosion of the latter FAEBs look like a wet firecracker in comparison. The whole advanced fleet, comprised of the said destroyer, one frigate, one Aegis and one cruiser was annihilated by the initial explosion of the thermobaric Hypersthene warheads contained in the hypersonic missile. And the subsequent secondary explosion caused a shockwave powerful enough to neutralize the engine of the nearest ship, in this very case two cruiser preceding the Evanessor where AA guns and SAMs have been set, as the carrier was no more capable of launching plane. The mobile artillery pieces set on the carrier were pushed off the deck, with some colliding between each other or with the isle, and some falling into the water, or worse, right into the following ships, a pair of Aegis.

In total, the worse had been avoided yet it was very far from the best scenario, as the majority of the Osean craft the Kestrel launched were either annihilated by the shockwave or by collision, pushed like chips of wood in a flash flood. Even the ones that were taxiing on the Kestrel runway fell into the see, or for the case of one, collide with the base of the central isle, shaking all the personnel on it. And as they were violently put out of their emplacements, they broke the catapults systems which caused the steam used to pressurize the said catapults to pour at the bridge.

Shipwise, only the advanced fleet along with the escort of a disabled carrier had been sunk. The Buzzard, Vulture and most importantly the brand-new supercarrier Kestrel were unharmed. Still, the ears of Iskanda weren't unharmed for long, as Weeker screamed furiously to the pilot which both saved and destroyed his fleet at the same time, right after getting back on his feet, having stumbled due to the collision of one of their Hornet with the isle.

" GALM 1, YOU ARE LUCKY YOU AREN'T ONE OF MY PILOTS. OR YOU WOULD BE SHOT AT DAWN IMMEDIATELY!"

" HALT DIE FRESSE (SHUT THE F* UP), I DON'T HEAR MYSELF SCREAMING ANY MORE! BESIDES IT'S TWELVE O'CLOCK AND I THINK SHARKS ARE HUNGRY TODAY!" Iskanda screamed back to the top of her lungs, before activating for some seconds her oxygen mask as screaming so hard almost emptied her lungs.

" YOU CAUSE A FREAKING DISASTER!" Weeker snapped back, almost deafening the Osean officers around him.

" Yes, Sir I agree she did, but if she didn't intercept this missile through this high costly method, the Kestrel would have been sunk and the Campaign number 4101 ended up in a far worse disaster for the allied forces." The officer identified as Anderson counter-argued against his own chain of command.

" Anderson, don't defend this mercenary scum if you want to keep your rank." Another officer told him, as Weeker was too busy yelling at the Erusean merc to pay attention to his own men.

"Like Galm 1 said, HALT DIE FRESSE Weeker. They are my pilots, not yours. And you are still standing on your ship because of their achievements, not yours!" Koenig retorted with an angry voice, not supporting to hear his pilots being threatened when they should -of course they should be blamed for the loss they cost - rather be thanked for the far worse disaster she managed to reduce, as this Anderson officer said.

" I'm sorry to interrupt this very funny shouting match, but the fleet is stuck due to the wreckage that did not sink yet, and we have Belkan anti-ship fighters incoming." Their AWACS informed them, as waves of Belkan F-1s, Tornado Gr4s and some Mirage 2000Ds were approaching from the north of the canal. And thanks to this damned missile they had lost their only interceptors. Still, they had two F-14Ds, two Sukhoi 33s -they had just been repaired - two F-15Cs, one F-15E, one Rafale M and one advanced X-29A piloted by a now very angry Erusean merc, it could be enough.

 **North section of Futuro canal, Belka, 24/04/1995, 12:15, Weather, outcast.**

The firsts to attack were two waves of four F-1s, coming from their two and ten hours, with a group of four Mirage 2000Ds coming at the front. The fleet was barely beginning to resume its forward motion, as a few wrecked ships were blocking its path. The Ustian fighters divided in three groups to take them down, with the AWACS picking the members:

" The Eagles, bearing 320. Galm 1, twin witches, bearing 060. Komyeta squadron, Espada 2, attack those Mirage coming head-on!"

" Roger. They're going to bite the dust." Halo 12 said, as her F-14D was accelerating with its wing closed.

The refitted X-29A was a bit faster than the Super Tomcats and arrived at gun range when they were only at missile range. Iskanda gunned down one F-1s, before turning hard to get in the six of one other. While doing this, the two Tomcats had already damaged the two other Kaizens and opened their wing after bypassing them to quickly get in their six and finished them with their guns.

The F-15s had no problem dealing with their F-1s either. Even if the latter managed to avoid their fire and retaliated with QAAMs which were evaded by the much more agile fighters. But once they crossed their path, Pixy had no trouble gunning one from behind while launching two missiles on one other, using the wide radar range of his Eagle. The two halo squad members get their kills quickly, but Fred's SAAMs were not quick enough to catch one F-1 in time, allowing him to launch two LASMs toward the stuck fleet. But the loss itself was a thrust of double-edged sword: the neutralized Aegis vessels were destroyed but their destruction freed the third fleet of the last wreckage in their way.

The Mirage were dealt through two XMAA volleys fired with a little delay between them by the Sea Flankers and Espada 2's Rafale. One tried to avoid them by diving and rushing toward the Osean fleet, hoping the Komyeta squadron wasn't going to risk new blue on blue. And the Osean Aegis surrounding the Kestrel shot him down after he only had the time to drop two GPBs on a destroyer, neutralizing its anti-air batteries.

" Other wave inbound. This time it's Tornado Gr4s and F-2s!" The AWACS announced, as the fleet was now at two third of the canal.

" I'm not letting any more death today." Iskanda affirmed sternly, as she dashed toward the F-2s.

The said F-2s launched some XMAAs at her, but she evaded them by flying at near sea level, with the missiles slamming the canal or its coast. Then she pulled out an Himmelman to get to their altitude, before tilting her aircraft to lock through her belly radar and fire two missiles at one while gunning another. This time it was the Kovsky brothers that were with her, and while the slightly more agile -than the Kaizens they previously encountered - F-2s manage to evade most of the XMAAs launched at them head on, the one which were damaged were finished without any mercy by the gunfire of Iskanda or Vasquez, even when they were already going in flames.

On the other hand, the Eagles and the Tomcats did a good job at shooting down the Tornados. Even if they were eight of them and they all have their jamming pod online they were quickly gunned down. Still it was tiring for pilots to fight while jammed, as they could only rely on their missile alarm to find their opponent. And all of them at the exception of Pixy suffered nasty hits due to the powerful guns of the Gr4s, as the Belkan version of them had an overall better mobility that allowed them to dogfight with their geometric wing fully extended, putting them on an almost equal foot with the other geometric wing aircraft they were currently fighting, the Tomcats.

But after all of those attackers were down, the silence was back on the waves. It was even a bit too quiet after all this battle and destruction. Still the silence did not last that much, as a distress signal was sent by the landed forces on the south of the canal, where they took the runway. The Sapin choppers had retreated to the mainland after their task successfully completed, leaving the AH-64 launched by the Aegis as scouts to watch the runway.

" This is Navajo 1. We are attacked by Nighthawks. We haven't seen them due to their stealth. Please Hur…" and the voice was interrupted by a QAAM launched by a F-117A that he thought he had avoided by barrel-rolling, but the missile came back at him and struck the Apache right on the cockpit.

" Damn, they are going to destroy all the supplies." Their AWACS could do nothing but see the destruction of the landed Hercules on the ground as the Ustian and Sapin craft were charging toward those stealths.

" These Belkan are quite smart. They knew this hypersonic missile attack would be a major distraction." Pixy conceded to his former compatriots.

" This is the Sergeant Bertz. Losses on the ground are huge. Eighty percent of the landed troops are already lost." An APC operator indicated, as the defensive gun of their vehicle was trying to repel the attackers, but without being powerful enough to take those weakly armored fighters down.

" This is Eagle Eye, one Osean satellite has been deployed to track the stealth. You should get locks a bit easier." Johnson informed this little change to the odds. Even if it changed nothing for the desperate forces on the ground.

" Finally, at XMAAs range! Fox 3!" Komyeta 2 exclaimed while firing four of them, with each finding its mark on a Nighthawk. Still they were a good dozen of them remaining. And the Komyeta squadron were the only equipped with multi target air-to-air missile for this mission after they reloaded following the end of operation Round Hammer, and it was the last of his ordnance.

" You may have stealth; you're always be flying bricks." Pixy fired one missile on a F-117A which tried to evade but end up in a stall and two other missiles struck him down.

" And do not try evasive maneuvers, you look like arrhythmic blind deaf comatose dancers." Espada 2 sent them a perfidious retort, as too often Belkan pilots considered her a little dancer.

" That was mean, Espada 2. But well-aimed." Halo 5 acknowledged her talk.

Iskanda had already gunned three of them. And know she tried to gun one while firing two missiles at another Nighthawk. Each of them tried to evade at max speed by barrel-rolling, but one barrel-rolled clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, and both of them collided over a burning C-130.

" Great. Two bird with one stone." She mischievously laughed, as all Nighthawks were going down in flames.

This little attack was a severe loss for Osea. Two units of marines and their vehicles, including SAMs and tripleAs had been almost utterly destroyed. And for Yuktobania too, as the An-225 which landed here after his delivery was reduced to dust by a LAGM fired by one of the attackers. History would look at this battle with a puzzled mind, trying to figure why the decisive victory Osean command had planned didn't occur. The response was simple: the slow destruction of their satellite network reduced their capacities of identifying the Belkan forces. And despite their decline in intel sources, Osea hadn't launch any scout or spy craft than the U2 they launched today. They gambled all on their numeric advantage. And almost lost everything.

Only the Kestrel and its support fleet had made into the North of the canal, with two useless carrier trailing them - the Buzzard and the Vulture, with only the two damaged Growler and a few stuck F/A-18Cs being the survivors of their fighter complement, as the Kestrel would need a few days to be operational again. Their escort was only of seven frigates, three destroyers and three cruisers, and two Aegis vessels. And all personnel on board were now praying that the Belkans wouldn't launch another raid with the Wesson-UFOs.

" I was planning to thank our guardian angels above us at the beginning, but as we only got exterminator angels up there I won't." Weeker complained once again of the aftermath of the hypersonic missile attack.

" You're such a weakling, weaker." Iskanda only mused but didn't say it, not willing to put her admiral at odds with the Osean top brasses even more.

" Ustian sixth Unit, RTB. You can return to your base, Vasquez, your leader was picked up by the Gavilàn squadron on their way back." Eagle Eye announced the end of this prolonged mission.

" OK. You pulled some crazy stuff today, Galm 1." Espada 2 admitted, finding that using thermobaric ordnance was a thing only crazy mens like Anton Kupchenko would try.

" Yeah, and in the end we survived. One point for the lady with crazy ideas." Iskanda went ironic, making fun of her own craziness, ending in some mad laugh.

" Guess Sancta Victoria was looking upon you, exterminator angel." Vasquez sum up Iskanda's luck through this almost mystic assumption, as she separated from the Ustian sixth unit to go back to her Sapin base.

" Maybe. Guess they must find our aerial battle funny if they sit on clouds up there." Galm 1 replied, turning the almost mystical assumption into a joke that made laugh all the sixth Ustian unit, even the AWACS operator.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 24/04/1995, 13:00, Weather: light cloud coverage, medium risk of snow.**

The sixth unit was finally back at the base. After refueling above Sapin with some of the A-400Ms the factory in Aarlon had produced, their flight was quite a quiet one, only interrupted at the end by the authorization message of the control tower to land. They all landed precociously, as almost all of them had taken few hits from gun fire, fearing that their tires or their landing gears could be damaged.

Iskanda wasn't in a very good mood as they entered the briefing room for the debriefing. Sure, the Kestrel survived. But the loss in Osean pilots were greater than the loss the allied forces inflicted to Belkan forces. And this Weeker guy wasn't someone she would like to collaborate with in the future, nor his pilots.

" Despite the losses the hypersonic missile attack inflicted, the third fleet has made through the canal thanks for your undeniable support. Right now, two squadron of F/A-18Cs have been brought from their mainland to compensate for the Osean lack of fighters. Rest and eat people, I know there're not only the sharks that are hungry."

" Yes, sir. And good luck in your talks with the Osean chiefs of command." Iskanda wished him, as the losses should have pissed these guys a lot.

" I hope they will not shun us for your actions. Anyway, go get some food and sleep, people, you're barely standing up." He dismissed the pilots, who for many haven't eat since 8:00 and it was now 13:10.

" You wouldn't have been able to act better today, Iskanda." Pixy said her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

" Thanks Pixy. They will accept in time maybe. But forgive? Never, Oseans are as vindictive as Belkans are proud." She rolled her eyes while saying that, knowing that acceptance never equal forgiveness in this crude world they were fighting in.

" Then they are just stupid. If you didn't act today their entire fleet would have been destroyed." Fred argued, thinking about the massive blast of the hypersonic missile. If it had detonated at the center of the fleet, the two explosion and the massive number of fragments propelled at crazy speeds would have destroyed all of it.

" However, Kupchenko's scientist have now found a method to shield their Hypersthene warheads from EMPs." Thesermeister admitted that he did not best them for long.

" But we have noticed today they are vulnerable to shockwaves. And it's always much simpler to create shockwaves than electromagnetic pulses." Viviane pointed out, as the shockwaves of FAEBs had been enough to trigger the explosion of the hypersonic missiles.

" And I'm sure Kupchenko would be almost proud to know he inspired others to use thermobaric ordnance from a plane, as an air-to-air armament." Alekseï added, finding all of this a bit ironic.

" Well, I hope he didn't put some copyright stuff on this usage. And next time I will try to warn a bit more." Iskanda replied, trying to best her mood.

" There's no try, my young friends. Tun es oder tun es nicht." Pixy said jokingly, and finally the pilots allowed themselves to relax a bit and laughed from his clumsy joke.

The food was greatly welcome, even if it was just tagliatelle with minced meat and tomato sauce, as all pilots were starving after this long flight almost uninterrupted. While eating, they shared their thoughts about the possible next operation, with the liberation of Directus and the attack on the Glatislant being the ones with the greatest likelihood to happen. However, in both cases they had few intel due to the loss of Osean satellites. But in both cases, they know they could expect to see BAWS and hi-tech fighters outclassing them or their allies by one or two decades of technical advancement.

 **End of chapter. I try to summarize the three operations we can choose between in the game, while adding some guy whose story is linked to the Kestrel. By the way, I have learned some time ago that Kestrel was one of the proposed names for the JSF program -now the F-35 lightning. Maybe it would have been a cooler name, what do you think, people?**

 **Anyway, feel free to comment, review, subscribe, and follow me or my story...**

 **01/08/2019: some grammatical mistakes fixed.**

 **12/1/20: some other corrections...**


	9. Chapter 5: Operation Varsity

**Ustio, Valais Air Base, 12/05/1995, 16:00, Weather: light cloud, little risk of snow.**

Undoubtedly, Iskanda would never get along with Ustian mountainous weather. One day you could believe it was summer, they could eat outside, even at dawn or at dusk. And three day later only the lead colored clouds were covering the sky and the entire base was covered in snow. Sometimes she could even understand why the Belkans who were stationed here before the secession called it nutzlos Landebahn.

Since the major push of the allied forces on the 24th of April, their operations have been nothing but CAP above the only areas they currently occupied, such as the canal Futuro or the Nord of Aarlon. They had some run-ins with the Belkan air force when they tried to intercept Oseans SR-71s with their MiG-31s. And obviously who was asked to cover then once their escort was torn off? Merc like her or anyone in Ustio's sixth Unit. Maybe they were pushing her that far to force her to make amends for the loss she caused this very day of April.

On the ground, Sapin, Oseans and Yuktobania were pushing the Belkan toward the Ustiano-Sapin border. But it was a plain area with few coverage, and Belkan CAS fighter, comprised of Su-32s Strike Flankers and A-10As were having a nice field play with the allied forces. Massive casualties were reported, and one of their reports bore bad news: the EC-865 Anacondas have been destroyed by Belkan fighters, and only one of the Tigers made it. All pilots who learned this at Valais were a bit sad for them, as they thought those stealth choppers could turn the tides a bit. Yet stealth never meant invulnerability.

And since the beginning of May they were almost stuck on this border. Ustio was a very mountainous terrain on all its territory with the North-West being the exception. It was in the plain of the North-West that Directus was located. The city itself has been founded -according to some touristic magazine she read about Ustio in her free time- around the tenth century. A pretty old city of stone and gothic cathedrals, yet it had expanded a bit outside its walls to create a new scientific and technological center. At least this city was a good mixt of old and new architecture as they describe it, not like those Osean big cities only made of skyscrapers.

Nevertheless, the allied ground forces found themselves really stuck only on the foothills of the Valaisian mountains at the South East of Ustio. The Belkan occupying them through hidden bunkers the Ustian haven't occupied for one good reason: the Belkan hid them so well that anyone trying to find them from the sky would have a hard time, even with an estimated map of the place. And they were too deep into the mountain to use conventional bunker busters. Furthermore, the few tunnels allied tried to walk through with even armored train revealed themselves to be deadly traps, the Belkan filling them with mines of all sorts or just closing some hidden doors of those tunnels and filling the said tunnels with toxic gases. Quite a gruesome tactic, but an efficient one.

So, when they were called to briefing room for a future operation just after the mess, they all had some idea of what could happen : either some mass bombing or some mass dropping of paras, the latter being the best for the people living there.

This time, the map was centered around some city named "Solis Ortus". Some arrows at the edges of the map showed some data about the city. It was three hundred kilometers at the West of Valais, three hundred and fifty kilometers from the Ustiano-Sapin border, but the main data was that this little city was only fifty kilometers from Directus. Iskanda was asking herself how a city that landlocked between seven high mountainous peaks could develop in the first place. But historical development was none of her concern right now.

" The mountain city of Solis Ortus is indeed located just outside Ustio's capital, Directus." recalled Johnson, before tipping some button, making appear a bunch of red dots on the middle of the city, three blue arrows coming from the South-East, labelled " Osean 101st Airborne division and Yuktobania fifth paratroopers division". Their unit was just represented by a hatched arrow.

" The Allied Forces will deploy airborne troops, comprised primarily of Osea's 101st Airborne Division and Yuktobania 5th Paratrooper Division, over Solis Ortus, in a surprise air and ground attack on the Belkan forces. This operation will play a critical role in Ustio's liberation. Your mission is to provide support for the airborne troops. Destroy Belka's surface-to-air defense network and all interceptor aircraft, securing a safe drop zone for the airborne troops..." Koenig summarized the objectives of the oncoming mission, while those main threat were displayed, with numbers such as rate of fire and effective range : BAWS, Flaks cannons, SAMs, Triple As, and as interceptors they could expect some MiG-31s, with anti-fighter forces equipped with F-16Cs, F-20As and MiG-29As to compensate for the lack of maneuverability of the Foxhounds.

" There are more than fifty thousand Ustians inside Solis Ortus. It's a city, not a canal with no building around. Also, be aware over Solis Ortus. Your actions will determine their fate. Good luck." Koenig indicated, wanting to have a "clean" reconquest. Even if such thing is always hard to achieve.

" Is this awareness pointed at me, or just a feeling?" Iskanda said, as the briefing screen went black. She obviously knew what Koenig was speaking about. All her life, she only loss things. Her true mother. Her freedom. The only true friends she hardly managed to get at Farbanti Sky academy. But life was made of change, and she had to accept it.

" In a matter of fact, yes. Your actions raised quite a few controversies. I mean, some Osean top brass want to give you a medal for saving their third fleet, some would want to see you shot at dawn and other don't know what to do. My point of view is you do what you had to and that's all." Koenig listed all the different standpoint over his pilot he had to defend fiercely over the phone two weeks ago.

" I got the message. I just had to prevent a few Airborne troops to be killed and they will consider me a hero." She went sarcastic a bit.

" Then I wish you the best of luck over Solis Ortus. Make Ustio proud!" Their commander encouraged them, before leaving the briefing room to go aboard their E-767 AWACS, while the pilots were leaving for their respective hangars.

And two of them had a pretty busy conversation on their way toward theirs.

" I have the same point of view than Koenig. End justify means." Her wingmen tried to cheer her up a bit.

" Gott Verdammt, I know that, Pixy. Yet it's not your mind who matters here. And even if we don't do an Ustian omelette without breaking eggs, egg's minds still matter." She argued, as they were halfway to the hangar.

As she saw the old rusty hangar that housed the Griffon next to theirs, she felt a bit sad. She better supported her allies with this 1960's plane that her X-29A. She was good at killing and destroying people, planes, and was even enjoying it, but it was far more difficult to be good at protecting people.

" Just give some time to those angry Osean top brass. If we succeed in taking Directus without too much of their help, they will reset their picture and authorize Ustio to sit at the table as a victorious nation and not as a defeated one who needed help." Pixy said, going a bit into his flights of philosophy.

" Pixy, we are taking flight into air, not into philosophy." She responded, making a bit fun of Pixy's habits to do philosophical comment, even if she could understand the logic behind it: Ustio needed to regain a status of a sovereign nation, not one dependent of Osea's wealth or military power.

" Whatever. I guess it's QAAMs only today for you?" Pixy asked, returning to a more practical subject.

" Not fully QAAMs." She said as they entered their hangar, where Pixy's F-15C was loaded with 8 XMAAs and 6 QAAMs. Her plane was loaded with 6 QAAMs and 2 small bombs which had some irregular design: they were pierced on all their surface, a bit like pumice.

" The weapon engineer who created the EPMs following Herr Thesermeister's indications had quite a hard time designing your "static" FAEBs". Herr Steller explained to Iskanda that her requirement about her weaponry has been fulfilled.

" Static FAEBs? You mean, like some kind of air mines?" Pixy try to understand how those kinds of elliptic thing could stay in the air. Naturally anti-gravity was only sci-fi things for him.

" He stated that they can hover for seven seconds over the drop point using small vectored nozzles with pressurized nitrogen, a bit like for the high-altitude maneuvers of F-104 Starfighter, if you know what I mean. After they will explode with a slightly reduce area of impact, but enough to disintegrate anything into a three hundred meters radius." Herr Steller described the new weapon to her future user.

" If you keep using thermobaric ordnance, I think mister Kupchenko will frame you for copyrighting his idea of hypersthene burst missile." Pixy sarcastically commented as he climbed into his fighter.

" Not the slightest risk. Osean intel said he was still grounded with his Wesson-UFOs over the Hadrian line, maybe due to his failure." Iskanda replied, climbing into hers and putting his helmet.

And at 16:40, they all took flight, the AWACS going at its service altitude of twelve kilometers, while the fighters went into supersonic flight. They could waste a bit of their fuel in afterburners today, as the transport unit they would be escorting was including KC-10 Extenders, in case any of the transport crafts had any lack of fuel before engaging the target area.

 **Seventy kilometers South West of Solis Ortus, Ustio, 12/05/1995, 17:20, Weather: clear.**

They could say it was a good day and not a good day. Of course, the visibility was nice, but visibility when dropping troops was always a double-edged sword: on one hand it gave good visibility on the landing point, but it would give the enemy a good visibility on the transports. And of course, they could not afford to lose even one. But first they would have to refuel, as they had to act quick. Hopefully Belka was using his bombers in long range raids on some factory of Osea. Osea has even let a free corridor to lure them in. Surely, they would lose a few factories. But Valais Air Base was important even for them, even if it was hard for them to admit it.

" This is your personal tea waiter, what can I offer? My mother usually said that chamomile work wonder to negate the will of using thermobaric ordnance." The technician of the KC-10 Iskanda was approaching said.

" I think my flight leader would need to be geared with chamomile tanks instead of fuel tanks then." Pixy added, as he was connecting to the probe on the left of the Extender, while Iskanda was connecting on the one at the left. For a X-29A it was always harder to connect with probes than for F-15C, as the receptacle of the X-29A was behind the cockpit, so she had to fly lower than other jets to perform in-flight refueling.

" I can hear you guys, and the two of my guns are enough to pierce through even the Antonov 225 that carries the Yuktes." Iskanda threatened while letting out a small laugh.

" Hey, live me alone, Kamerade mercenary. And take care of the ground force at Solis Ortus." The pilot of the said An-225 said.

" All right, I will take care of them. Galm 2, ready for this?" She rhetorically asked, as her tanks indicators signaled her the refueling process was finished.

" Of course, I'm ready. Solis Ortus is waiting for its liberators." He replied, before disconnecting from the probe simultaneously with her flight lead, before hitting the deck toward the peaks of the mountains surrounding Solis Ortus.

The six other Ustian planes followed them on similar flight patterns, hoping that the radar Belkan net would be focused on the transport planes - two C-130 Globemaster and the Antonov-. If they succeeded here and now Directus path would be open for them in no time.

 **Solis Ortus, Ustio, 12/05/1995, 17:30, Weather: clear.**

Even if they were longing the peak of the mountains, they knew they would be noticed. Belkans SAMs servants weren't deaf. And soon shots began to grow in number.

" This is Eagle Eye, clear me those SAMs sites in the forest. But don't put the forest on fire."

" Halo 12 roger. GPBs armed." Morgana said, opening her geometric wing along with the other F-14D her squadron contained.

A few drop latter, helped by the F-15E which choose to bear GPBs too today, the SAMs sites were destroyed, while the five other planes had already advanced over the southern part of Solis Ortus. Belkan defenses were set on few places between some buildings to shield themselves from long range missile or rockets, as these kinds of weaponry would impact on the surrounding buildings, something the allied forces wanted to avoid.

Iskanda could see the powerful net: three sites composed of one BAWS shielded by two Flaks guns and two TripleAs, while three SAMs sites composed of four launchers on the outskirt of this southern district. And of courses dozens of tanks and APCs were hidden in the area, but it wasn't their job today to take care of them. Just a few second after they arrived above the city they were targeted and a helluva amount of gun fire welcomed them. Explosive shells of Flaks and tracers' bullets were highlighting the sky.

" So much for Belkan hospitality, but I find it a bit too warm for my taste." Komyeta 1 said, as he destroyed a SAMs site using one carefully aimed LASM he fired like a rocket, without locking on.

" Same here. And their gunners are well above stormtrooper level." Iskanda acknowledged, being forced to attack vertically the BAWS and its close-range support fire. It was quite hard to repeat; she needed to climb without getting hit in the process, then do Stuka diving on her opponents, but this was even harder here as the building around the Belkan defenses were hindering her lock-on capabilities. So, she couldn't fire with accuracy from very high, and even if she could, flying higher would mean getting splashed by the explosive shells of the flak anyway.

For two or three minutes all the Ustian fighters had to resort to this tactic, doing candle climbing and Stukas-like diving. But in the end, it was an efficient tactic, and soon the Belkan defenses were nothing but fires that lighted the places of Solis Ortus. At least the transport would know where to drop their troops.

And as the seven aircrafts moved toward the area in the center of Solis Ortus, the first C-130 Globemaster began its advance toward the drop point.

"Escort Unit, this is the 101st Airborne, alpha transport. We are now entering the designated airspace. We can't return to base until we empty that transport. We are counting on you." The pilot of the first C-130 announced its arrival. Flying a bit above the roof of the mountain, with his rear door open, the plane was finally ready for troops deployments.

It was time for a final encouragement of the Airborne troops by their commander, even if it was not the nicest one.

" Get your ass into gear people! You've gotta jump or you're of no value to this unit!" Their flight officer screamed in their earpieces, as they were finishing the gearing, with already a dozen of airborne troops gathered around the back door.

While the troops were readying, the sixth unit kept destroying the anti-air unit in the center of the city. Hopefully for them, the houses there were old big bourgeois houses along large street, so it meant the Belkans had less room to hide. Some were even hidden in the bushes of the gardens of those houses. Flying slowly between the houses, they destroyed the anti-air network with great accuracy.

" Anyone showing sign of weakness will be left behind!" Their commander shouted, even if no one wanted to appear as a weak airborne trooper in the unit right now.

" If I were them, I would want to be left behind. We may have destroyed the AAs, but I bet Belka has hidden a good pack of their troops on the ground." Pixy said, while firing his guns on some Flak gun. A stockpile of ammo was hit, and this resulted in the utter destruction of the unit. He even saw burning soldier falling into a little artificial piece of water.

" Use that anger to get fired up and take 'em out! Understood? Go get 'em!" Their commander shouted them one more time, before running steps could be heard.

On their radar they could see the allied Airborne troops falling from the C-130 as a long line of blue arrows for the little time they were in the air. Still, all of this was far too still from the Belkan army. Right now all of them had obviously their radar set on long range, waiting for enemy interceptors to show up while they were heading for the third anti-air batteries, a bunch of kilometers at the North West of Solis Ortus. Those batteries would be the easiest to destroy, as they were set on the parking of small shops in this area, with small numbers of Flaks or AA guns on the metallic ceilings of some.

" There are fewer risks of hurting someone with guns here - outside the gunners obviously -." Iskanda thought before strafing a group of nicely line up Flaks, having destroyed two SAMs on the parking with missiles.

The other Ustian pilot resorted to similar tactics, flying low to avoid lock-on by the enemy SAMs, which possessed some kind of blind spot when dealing with fast moving aircraft at low altitude. The Belkan net was getting weaker with each second passing, losing both men and assets.

And as her and the other Ustian pilot were destroying the anti-air defenses, it was the time for some F-16Cs and F-20As to show up, along with the more numerous APCs and tanks that were into hiding and now were engaging the airborne troops, which doesn't have the necessary firepower to deal with them.

" This is Eagle Eye; we have got inbound interceptors and a ground counter-attack. Fighters, spread out and engage those new threats before they jeopardize the operation." The AWACS confirmed the situation, which at this point in time could very well end up in full success or in utter disaster.

" Airborne Unit here, we weren't warned there would be such a great concentration of troops. Please do something!" One of the paratroopers said, before being interrupted by suppressive gunfire.

" All right, these are your assignments for our counter-counter-attack. Halo 10 and 12, go provide some CAS with your GPBs. Halo 7 will join you once he finished dealing with the Belkan batteries. All other airplanes, climb and intercept me the enemy crafts ASAP!" Koenig ordered, to which the pilots responded with a simple "Roger" or "on my way to intercept those Belkans".

The Belkan fighters possessed a two-tone light mountainous camo, with a more brownish colors and grey underbelly for the F-16Cs while the F-20As had a more greyish camo with dark navy-blue underbelly. They managed to sneak up under the AWACS surveillance by using the same tactic as the Ustian fighters : hitting the deck and flying in the valley between the mountains, which offered them radar coverage but restrained their number, as only few fighters could come from those valleys at the same time. There was only six of each type, for now, but those numbers could vary very fast.

" This is Komyeta 1, Fox 3!" Valentin said as he got a solid lock on the enemy forces. He was not the only one firing his XMAAs, and one volley of four fighter - two F-15Cs and two Su-33s - were enough to shatter the enemy formation, which end up in only two F-20As running for their lives.

" Galm 1 here, pursuing the bandits." She said as she caught up with the Belkan crafts, firing one missile on each of them before outrunning them and finishing them with guns head-on after she pulled an Himmelman.

" Good work people, but I think this is only the beginning of our worries. Ustian sympathizers on the ground just report to our forces that Belka was sending two armored trains from Directus. Komyeta squadron, go deal with it, you're the heavy hitters today." The AWACS relayed the data, as the threats on the ground were reduced by precise GPBs dropped from the F-14Ds or through Stuka-diving by the other fighter not equipped with precise ground ordnance today.

Still, missiles and guns were enough to dismantle most Belkan tanks and APCs. And by the time Halo 7 came back from the northern area, most tanks were destroyed. However, even with all their care and awareness, they couldn't just hit the units. Some building had crumbled a bit due to shockwaves, and this added to the wreckage greatly slowed the advancement of the Osean forces. And of course, Belka was not going to let them have a peaceful dropping for the second Globemaster.

"Escort Unit, this is the 101st Airborne, beta transport. We have fighters closing from all sides! Hurry!"

" Sorry, but with their darkened paintjob and the cloud in the valleys around Solis Ortus it's not easy to see them coming." Halo 5 quickly apologized before firing a volley of XMAAs toward the Falcons.

" Eagle Eye to all units, do not worry, Yuktobania has just announced some good news. The siege of Wesson is almost finished, and henceforth they can redirect a squadron of Strike Flankers."

" Es werde nie genug!" (it won't be enough!) a Belkan F-16C pilot retorted, as he and four comrades were climbing toward the Globemaster. Taking into account the fact that almost all escorts were currently engaging the overwhelming Belkan aerial forces, they almost had the element of surprise here. They did not inflict that much losses, no allied was shot down, but many were hit by some gun burst of the small nimble fighters. If the Fighting Falcon was considered bypassed by the more modern fighter the sixth unit pilots were flying into, the Belkan training allowed them to keep pace with their enemies.

But they forget two planes. One, who was climbing just behind them, a F-15C with a red wing. Even before the war he was known as a great mercenary. He wasn't an official knight of the round table, but he was able to survive there. And Eagles were always faster than F-16Cs. Only ten seconds after he tossed that line the Belkan leader could heard his alarm blared.

" Galm two, fox three." Pixy said, as he released a volley of missiles upon his enemies.

Yet only two were shot down. And now the remaining F-16Cs were in range for their standard IR-guided missiles. They could have fired their XMAAs if this freaking Belkan merc wasn't here. But they should have tried.

" Beta transport, Flares, now!" shouted the AWACS operator, as the three Belkan fighters fired their missiles.

And as they fired, Pixy began to wonder were his flight leader was. When he climbed to track those Falcons, he saw her dispatching two F-20As with a QAAMs and a pair of missiles, but then he lost sign of her as he passed through some clouds. But only five seconds after he began his questioning, she made speak of her.

" Galm 1, adjust your heading, you gonna impact us!" the pilot of the Globemaster screamed in panic, seeing without any needs for radar the black and white X-29A rushing toward his craft. And he has already depleted half of his flares, the situation couldn't get worse.

" Stop panicking you Osean mongrels. Just fly steady and stop pulling of flares on my mark." She responded, before kicking the afterburners.

" Damn, what's she gonna do? Drop a FAEB behind us?" The copilot asked with a bit of fear, fully aware that their armor could not withstand such damage.

" This idea went through my mind at some point, but not yet." She kept her steady path. Pixy had to disengage, targeted by SAAMs of Belkan Tigersharks. She decided to fly at the right of the Globemaster, gliding with her airplane tilted between the fuselage and one of its engines. At some point she quickly saw the slightly afraid faces of paratroopers seeing this fighter flying dangerously close to their transport through its windows, but it was only for mere seconds.

" This was close." the copilot commented, the wing below which Iskanda just flew being shaken a bit by the thrust of her dual engine.

" Stop the flares, now!" She ordered, hoping that this time they would listen to her.

The flares ceased for a second, hopefully the Falcons were recharging at this very moment. However, the next second their radar locked to a very different target: they thought this X-29A would collide with the Globemaster, but it did not. And now it was charging toward them gun blazing and missile armed. Caught off guard, the one at the center of the three-plane formation was hit by a powerful twin gun burst. The two over quickly switched to XMAAs, as they were five hundred meters behind the lead plane, but the nimble fighter was quick enough to evade them.

" Galm 1, missile evaded. That was pretty close." Eagle Eye commented her very short hairpin bend.

" It's not like if we were in B7R. Those dummkopf are nuts compared to the ones I fought there." Galm 1 grinned, letting a small smirk of sarcasm.

The two surviving Falcon tried to converge their gun to have a good firing solution, but they failed when the X-29A pull out a barrel-roll while diving. This make them completely overshoot, as the forward swept-wing fighter flew below them. And as they had slowed to better aimed their target, they only had the time to do a half-turn before two QAAMs sealed their fate.

" Thanks for this merc. We are jumping now." The commander of the airborne troops ordered, and a great number of parachutes was seen as they jumped in the void.

" We are the best; we are the best." One soldier said while jumping.

" They are the proudest soldier ever." Pixy described, after losing the two Tigershark nailing him by using his greater thrust and pulling out a looping to get behind them, before dispatching one with a quick burst of gun and in the same time firing a pair of missiles.

" I thought Belkan were the proudest on this strange, real earth." Komyeta 2 recalled.

" Belkan pilot in B7R yes. But I respect those people who willingly do some chute while for us a chute means a defeat." Pixy explained, while leveling up next to his flight leader, before following her on a quick dive on a trio of falcons who were trying to fire on the airborne troopers.

They dispatched one each with gun, and the third, who maybe had better reflexes, managed to lose the two missiles they sent. But one QAAM was a bit harder to avoid, and he was down by it. This little dogfight was now finished, with the Belkan attackers destroyed. However, the Allied aircraft were not untouched even if they had no losses until now.

" Halo 12, 14 and 7 have suffered quite nasty hits today, and they already dispatched all their special air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance. Retreat authorized; they should be enough paras on the ground now to be able to deal with the Belkan remnants." The AWACS suggested, seeing their airplanes with respectively forty, fifty-five and fifty percent of damage.

" Roger, withdrawing from combat airspace. Do not see this as an opportunity to best our kill count, Galm 1!" Halo 12 responded.

" I don't have the needs, Frédégonde. Mine is already higher than yours since I returned from B7R." Galm one retorted, as she moved toward the final transport, the Yukte Antonov to escort it.

" Damn, I swear next time it's a B7R op I go with you just to make sure I best you!" Halo 10 insisted heavily to support her wing mate.

" Like if you could." Iskanda mused. Even if they were great pilots, she had some doubts about their abilities to joust with someone with the skills of Kupchenko or one of the great knights of B7R.

 **Ustio, Solis Ortus, 12/05/1995, 18:00, Weather: clear.**

The three damaged fighters had safely retreated. And for some time, only allied fighters were in the sky. The Yukte crafts were approaching, with an ETA of fifteen minutes.

Hopefully the mountain range was preventing any chopper attacks: they were too high for their engines, apparently. Or that's what Galm 2 thought, as he wondered why the Belkan did not use them. Of course, Belkan interceptors could still arrive, but they would be spotted as soon as they left the valleys to climb and attack them.

" We have lost a bit of ammo during the jump." An Osean soldier complained, his voice partially covered by gun shots.

" My team is pinned down in sector E-5. Snipers hiding in the bell towers of the town hall." Another Osean voice transmitted, while some screams of agony were heard over the waves, as the precise shots of the Belkan snipers were cutting through the Osean ranks.

" Eagle Eye here. Planes, go gun down those snipers." The AWACS ordered, and soon the fives bell towers of the town hall were sighted as gun only targets. Of course, the Sukhois could have reduced those snipers to smithereens in only one rocket launch, but the damage would have been unbearable historically speaking.

" Roger. We will be as precise as the "white death." Komyeta 2 acknowledged, quoting the name of an infamous sniper of some Yukto-Romnyan war.

" Aim well, the facade of the town hall is an important historical site." Halo 5 specified, as the five planes were approaching from all sides.

Some snipers decided to drop their gun to resort to more efficient weapons. And as Galm 2 gunned one to the East of the town hall, he saw his leader be forced to turn around to avoid a shoulder-mounted SAM, this making her missed her attack. She quickly climbed to lose the missile and kept climbing for some time right above the bell tower roof, being in the blind spot of the Belkan snipers. Then she hit the deck and fired her dual gun. The roof of slate collapses on the snipers, killing them instantaneously.

" One precise shot, Galm 1. Even if your methods are quite a bit too rash for my point of view." Thesermeister said, as he gunned down the last sniper net, taking advantage of the chaos Iskanda's attack had created.

" Sorry for this bell tower, put the slate bill on mine" She responded, as she climbed back to a higher position where her radar was less obstructed by the mountains.

" Damn, slateception." Halo 5 made fun of the situation, which cause Galm 1 to let a little sarcastic laugh.

However, if he really knew the situation here, no one, even him would have been laughing. They thought all snipers have been killed. Not all of them. One was hurt, but still alive. He only had one bullet remaining. And he decided to shoot it right when Halo 5 fly right in front of the town hall, the fighter firing a pair of missiles on a tank a bit further.

The canopy of his F-15C was shattered to pieces by the heavy caliber bullet. Thousands of glass parts cut him through his flight suit, causing a leak of the fluid that was usually compressing his body when doing high-g maneuver. By luck, the bullet has only gone through his right foot. No major arteries were hit, but it was painful as hell.

" Halo 5, respond. What happened?" The AWACS operator asked. This time Johnson was truly worried. Well, not as worried as when Iskanda chose to fight Kupchenko for fun, but still very worried about the fate of the fighter and the pilot in it.

" Fucking sniper. My avionics are fried, and I think I will have to count my toes this evening." The wounded Ustian pilot swore.

But this lucky shot was the last straw of this soldier. The soldier in his green two-tone camo was quite visible on the grey slate. And two gun bursts of Iskanda's guns were enough to cut his body in half, with both part falling from the roof.

" This is the C company of the 101st. Confirming death of all snipers."

Meanwhile, Halo 5 had managed to level up his fighter, but he couldn't fly very high or very quick due to the loss of his canopy. Only the compass was still working on his fighter, the only non-electronic indicator. He knew this battle was over for him right now.

" Eagle Eye to Halo 5, Koenig order you to retreat. We need living pilot to celebrate our future victories, not martyrs." Johnson transmitted, and the fighter took the way toward Valais Air Base.

" Roger. Komyeta team, Galm team, good luck finishing this operation." Halo 5 answered, with terrible cracking due to his wrecked radio.

" I hope he will not have radio failure." Komyeta 2 wished, as he rejoined with the other pilots.

Their forces were now reduced to half its initial size. If more Belkan reinforcements arrived, even the Yukte announced squadron would not ensure the fate of this battle. The only thing the Belkans were going to ensure was that the allied victory would be a pyrrhic one. Maybe this time Galm 1 and her wing mate had succeeded in protecting the troops transports, but the losses on the ground had been quite high, and their own losses in the air weren't mounting only because there was no Belkan interceptors in the vicinity to splash the retreating Eagles and Tomcats.

 **Solis Ortus, Ustio, 12/05/1995, 18:15, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

Some fog was beginning to appear on the mountains near the city as the sun was now getting low. The visibility was slightly decreasing, but to counter this the Yukte crafts were finally in sight. Eight Su-32s Strike Flankers with a two-tone grey camo and red wingtips were entering the airspace. Their call sign was Molotok (Hammer).

" Molotok leader here, sorry for being late, but we had to make a little change of way to refuel after the battle over Wesson." The Yukte pilot explained, as they unite with the sixth Ustian Unit.

" Don't worry, Belkan were quite quiet in the intervals. But I would not gamble my next payment than the situation will not last long." Thesermeister said to his former compatriots. He was still a bit uneasy to fly alongside them, as he and his brother were technically aircraft stealer.

" Well, I don't know if they have good hearing or good timing, but I have two flight of Belkan crafts on my radar right now. MiG-29As Fulcrums and Strike Flankers." The AWACS put an end to the current talks.

" They do not know when to give up, do they?" Molotok 3 rhetorically asked, knowing the answer was obvious.

No response was given. The four remaining fighters began their climb toward the Belkan Fulcrums, which had a pale grey paint job to reduce visibility at long distances, and the eight Yukte crafts lowered their altitude, going the shortest way available for them. Both allied teams had the enemy aircrafts now well identified, with six MiGs and ten Sukhois.

" Time to see who's the best in Strike Flanker." Molotok 4 taunted the Belkan pilots.

" Du wirst wie ein Molotov Cocktail verbrennen, du Wodka Trinker!" (You will burn like a Molotov cocktail, you vodka drinker) One Belkan fighters replied, mocking the name of the Yukte squadron.

And five second later, the fragile balances of forces which slightly favored the allied forces was fully shifted by the arrival of a new kind of threat.

" Eagle Eye to Molotok squadron, warning. The local resistance managed to send us a notice through the Oseans forces. The valley where the Belkan Flankers are coming, it houses the railway toward Directus. And the Belkan have some armored trains." Johnson reported the data that had been sent to him just ten seconds ago.

" Csuka. Where is that train?" Molotok leader worryingly asked, even if it was too late.

Both Su-32s squadron were already in the valley, with only four kilometers between them. And just a bunch of seconds later all hell break loose. Entire volleys of SAMs and Flaks welcomed the Yuktes, while the shockwaves were partially dissipating the fog in the valley.

But the Yukte didn't turn around, they followed their duty willingly, firing their respective air-to-ground ammo while evading the Belkan air-to-air missiles. Hopefully for the Yuktes, the Belkan craft engaged them only with XMAAs, not willing to be hit by friendly fire. Still, the Belkan fire began to be successful, as one of the Sukhois was hit by the shrapnels of the Flak square in his left engine. Losing thrust and stability, the Yukte craft tried to flee, but was down by a pair of XMAAs.

" Molotok 4 down. Chute sighted, the Osean troops on the ground should be able to recover him." Eagle Eye said, interrupting the talks for some seconds, being mainly comprised of fire and avoiding indications.

In response to the down of one of their wingmate, the Yukte attacks become fiercer, firing all they had on the enemy armored trains. As the Yuktes were strafing and shooting the turrets of the train, the Ustian fighters had come closer to the Fulcrums. Close enough for the Fulcrums to engage them with SAAMs. A numerous volley forced the Ustian pilot to either dive or climb to evade the precisely aimed fire. Quickly, the interceptors began trailing the allied aircrafts, with some remaining aircrafts going reinforce the Flankers in their fight against the Yukte forces.

And on the Yukte side, victory was not really nearby. Two other downed planes had greatly decreased their strength, despite having put one armored train out of commission, destroyed half the weaponry of the other, and downing five Belkan Flankers. The Fulcrums which just arrived on the battlefield immediately downed two more Yuktes.

" Eagle Eye here, only three attackers remaining. Forget the Belkan craft up there and come support our allies."

" All right, I have just two SAAMs spammers being me. I will get read of them. Komyeta team, use this opening." Galm 1 complained, as she evaded the fast but not very agile missile.

She flew straight ahead for some time, evading the Fox 1s by hairpin bend. Then she pulled her head-to-tail maneuver while firing a QAAM on each Belkan fighter. The one on the left was utterly destroyed, but the other managed to avoid a direct hit, but his heavily damaged engine doesn't allow him to outrun the X-29A for long. Five seconds later a dual gun burst put an end to his misery.

The two Su-33s had managed to lose their opponents during this time and were now firing all their long range armament on the Belkan attackers and the train. In result, the five remaining Belkan Su-32s were shot down, and two LASMs struck the train, blowing him in pieces. Komyeta 2 finished the scattered survivors of the train crews with rocket fire. Sighs of relief from the Yuktes could be heard on the radio, as they could finally take a breath from this fierce fight.

Meanwhile, the Galm team dealt with the four Belkan Fulcrums. The two who were trailing the allied Su-33s chose to attack Iskanda from the front, but it revealed to be a deadly mistake for them. The nimble fighter dodged their attacks with ease, while one of them was struck by a missile, barely evading the second of the pair. Iskanda quickly flew between them, before pulling a head-to-tail maneuver, putting her in the right position to fire one more missile at the already damaged Fulcrum, and going full afterburners on a strafing run for the last one.

Pixy choose to resort to a slightly less rash way to deal with his enemies: He outrun them before pulling an Himmelman, and firing at them with XMAAs. The two Belkan fighters scattered, running for their lives. Only one of them manage to outmaneuver the missile, only to fall on the crosshairs of Galm 1, which had just gunned down her opponent. She quickly fired a pair of missile head on. If the first only struck the right wing, shaking the Fulcrum, the second went for the canopy, and Iskanda could only see a fighter broken in half falling to his death after the explosion.

" Great. Galm 1 to Eagle Eye, Belkans have been terminated." She confirmed her kills.

" You kinda' stole this last kill, leader." Pixy said, as he leveled up next to her.

" Sorry, I will leave you one kill over Directus then." She promised, before laughing a bit.

" Molotok leader here, I hope that's the last of them. Another armored train and we were toast." The Yukte described the poor situation of his squadron. He only saw two chutes on the five losses.

" I am afraid it is not. There are three railways, and only two trains. Something is wrong. Wait… the engineers in Aarlon just sent some data they were able to decipher right now. Displaying on your onboard computer." The AWACS operator reduced the hope of a victory even more.

 **Solis Ortus, Ustio, 12/05/1995, 18:20, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

The new weapon was something they had oblivious reason to be afraid of. As the Axe and Hammer logo quickly appeared, they only waited five second as the data was sent. RTLS was its designation. Railway Tactical Laser System. They didn't have much time to study the documents than the latter arrived on the third railway.

It was a big self-propelled train, with a central turret bearing two small tubes, looking like astronomical telescopes. The front and haft part were bearing four smaller turrets, supposed to act as SPKs according to the intel. Still, they only had few data on this new threat: range, rate of fire, locking capacity, all of this was unknown. And the onboard gunners decided to take full advantage of this.

" Feuer an den Kosak!" The commander of the unit ordered.

" Ver. Frequenz gesetzt. Feuer, jetzt!" (Roger, frequency set, Firing, now!")

The allied pilots could only see the trail the laser burst leave in the air, as it ionized the air on its path a bit. And they could do nothing but dive on it as they saw the three port engines of the Yukte Antonov blowing into pieces. The heavy transport fell like a stone, and a few seconds later hit the surrounding mountains in a great explosion. Even if there were projects of laser-based weaponry in all countries, it was the first time they saw one on the battlefield, and with such firepower.

" Eagle Eye to all unit. Be careful. Prioritize hit and run tactics and avoid flying in straight lines." Johnson suggested. He hoped now that the AWACS was out of range of this RTLS, but he wasn't truly sure due to the lack of intel.

" Molotok leader here, it's time to drop the Hammer on the Belkan train society." The Yukte said, firing a volley of XAGMs on the train but they all explode in mid-air.

" I admit even their light laser have good firepower." Valentin conceded, as one of his LASMs was reduced to dust by the laser.

" Those lasers are weird. Why we do not see bright beams like in movies?" Iskanda asked, having thought laser weaponry would be at least a bit like in sci-fi.

" I guess they used high frequency pulse lasers instead of laser beams, it's more efficient in the field of energy per shot." The scientific response came from Thesermeister.

" Molotok squad, on me. Going for a saturation attack." Alekseï said. He doubted those lasers could intercept the full force of a rocket launch and eight XAGMs.

" Roger. Cover us, Galm!" Molotok 5 acknowledged, flying in erratic pattern to break the lock of those turrets.

But as the AWACS was busy trying to figure out the weak spots of this new threat, and also figuring if they were or not in range of the latter, some low flying Belkan crafts managed to slip through their surveillance. The Molotok squadron -or what was left of it- began its attack, ignoring the Belkan fighters. And the allied fighters were too busy doing hit-and-run missile attacks, even if they did not hit anything. They were forced to fly outside their gun range due to the good tracking abilities of the RTLS. Molotok 6 learned the impossibility to do strafing runs on this kind of enemy the hard way : he had managed to saturate for a while the laser defenses with his XAGMs and missiles, and even to damage one main turret, but as he broke off from his attack he was reduced to shreds by the laser. All allied aircraft saw then what high frequency pulse laser do to airplanes. It was like being hit by a very fast and powerful gun but with very little caliber. Parts of the Strike Flanker literally exploded projecting metallic debris in its path before the fuel tanks overheats critically due to the laser fire and turn the fighter in a fireball.

The Galm team kept firing as the Yukte were closing, before turning to evade the deadly discharges. Then they turned again toward the RTLS, zigzagging to avoid the laser fire as they all attacked together. The RTLS disappeared behind a heavy cloud of smoke, but this time the defense mechanism had been oversaturated. Still it did not go down without heavily hitting all fighters. All suffered nasty hits, especially the bigger Sukhois. And at the moment that should have been the final fight, the final boss of this mission, hell decided to break loose again.

" Warning, high radar spike!" The AWACS warned but too late, having been distracted a bit too much by this technically advanced foe.

" Fox 1!" And "Fox 3!" could be heard as six MiG-31s open fire on the damaged allied aircrafts. The enemy formation was of seven aircraft, with the leading aircraft bearing an onboard jammer that had helped them bypassing the AWACS surveillance.

And as they all had lost a great amount of energy, all Sukhois went down one by one. Hopefully four chutes were sighted, and the aircrafts exploded far away from the city. Now the Galm team was only what was left. Even if on the radar map they could see Osean reinforcements coming from the recently retaken Wesson they would be on their own for some time.

Iskanda's X-29A was not as damaged as when she arrived from Farbanti, but she knew that if she pushed the plane too far it could have bad consequences for the aftermath of today. As the Foxhounds came closer to engage with the two fighters, they thought they would deal as quickly as the four Sukhois they just dispatched, their camo and roundels began visible. They bore a bright white camo with blood tainted leathers on the wingtips, and they were identified as the "Scharlach Schwan" squadron.

" Schwan leader, we had then cornered. Let's take them down and enter in the legend." Schwan 3 said, enthusiastic. They would succeed were the major had failed.

" Beware cornered and wounded beasts. It's said they usually behave with temerity and without fear." Iskanda calmly replied, her spirit illogically cooled by the thought of how she was going to take them down. She had grown some mad strategies since the battle of Futuro canal.

" It should be easy to kill then." The latter pilot responded. However, he was taken aback by the moves of this X-29A. Instead of fleeing, she was going head-on on their leader, which had a slightly less maneuverable aircraft due to the onboard jammer it was carrying.

Despite the SAAMs and XLAAs that were fired on her, she kept her path. Pixy fired his last XMAAs in the hope that they would at least force the enemy formation to disband, reducing the fire Iskanda was going against. She felt her aircraft shaken when a gun burst cut a bit of her left wing, but she managed to recover from the stall, but with her airplane inverted. Yet in this position she just had to tilt just a bit to shoot the enemy leader. Which she did with her gun and a missile. Immediately the jamming was off, and she could track the remaining fighter way easier than before. Made furious by the loss of their leader, a great number of MiG-31s was chasing her - In fact, almost the whole squadron, as Pixy was dueling with one particularly good member-.

" You will pay for what you did, du geld-hungrige Söldnerin!" Schwan 2 said, indeed out of himself after his loss.

" This beast need to be slain to save Directus!" Another said, anger filling his voice.

" Wounded and cornered beast are more dangerous. Yet beheaded ones are only dangerous for themselves." Iskanda taunted the Belkan fighters, ensuring that they would climb to follow her.

In her climb she had to avoid vertically launched XLAAs and SAAMs, but this was made easier by the fact that those missiles were not made to be launched in this fashion. So, they weren't as quick as usual, yet she was avoiding them by the skin of her teeth.

The enemy pilots were a bit puzzled how this little prototype managed to maintain his advance on their heavy interceptors designed for supersonic flight. She was whirling around their gun range, barrel-rolling vertically, toying with death, this cold lady. But this game wasn't made to last. Arrived at nearly ten kilometers, she stopped her ascension, and dropped the two "static" FAEBs. She felt great pain when she pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver, gravity adding to the G-forces. Still, as she was getting out of red sight, she saw the Foxhounds almost covered in blood for an instant as they crossed their path. Of course, no one saw the two small bombs hovering around.

" Ignition in 4, 3..." She laughed while counting their final countdown.

" Wachte mal was passiert?" Schwan 6, the one who was battling with Pixy asked, as he saw a violent and bright explosion reducing his comrades to dust as they were about to dive on the X-29A.

He disengaged Pixy to head for his leader. However, this move allowed Pixy to circumvent him, and the latter fired two missiles on him. And while he banked right to avoided them, he did not see the final QAAM of Iskanda coming right at his big air intakes. His fighter turned into a fireball immediately.

" Eagle Eye, reinforcements confirmed down, I ensure you this time. No more enemy coming from anywhere." The AWACS announced the end of the mission.

" This is Mage squadron, I guess we are arriving too late. Damn those Belkans." The Osean reinforcements leader cursed, as he could do nothing but watch from his F-15C, being the escort of two old C-5 Galaxy who were carrying light airborne vehicles to help clear any last Belkan resistance.

" The situation is fine now, Mage leader. Drop the airborne vehicles on the set point and it will be it. Komyeta team has been recovered by the Airborne troops, and the Halo squad made safely to the base. Galm team, mission is over, let's go back home." The AWACS finally ended their mission, and the two mercenaries turn to the East, toward Valais. Both had their plane damaged, but not as much as their pride, due to them not being able to save even one Flanker or the Antonov.

" Until next time then Mage squadron." Galm 2 wished.

The Osean turned away too, as Solis Ortus had no available runway long enough for their fighters. Little did they know their next encounter would be something no one in both squadrons could have foreseen right now.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 12/05/1995, 19:30, Weather: freezing fog.**

The back travel was way quieter than the forth one. They were only two to come back in the end. Of course, the sixth Unit itself hadn't suffer any losses in matter of men, but their material damage was quite great. The Osean and Yukte forces deployed there had suffered huge losses, as the Belkans on the ground had almost never surrendered. And the losses of the Antonov and Molotok squadron wasn't helping in the balance of forces.

Still this much quieter travel was a bit harder due to the damage they sustained. Especially when they refueled on the Osean KC-10. Their damaged aircrafts were vibrating heavily at low speed. Iskanda was taking the full instability of her airplane, who did not possess great numeric compensators. If she could gain enough money at the end of this war, and obviously if she survived it to the end, she would maybe go for the Berkut. The plane of her current arch nemesis, who was for a moment capable of jousting with her.

And to add even more difficulty, the valley was now filled with low altitude clouds, creating a dangerous freezing fog. They almost landed blindly, guided only by some bright red lights on each side of the runway. As she taxied her aircraft to her nearby hangar, she could only see bravery in the pilots of the E-767 landing after them. It was definitely a hundred time harder to land such a massive airplane in this kind of fog. Hopefully it did not have to taxi, being instead move by a small tractor.

This time no one slipped on the runway, as it was only wet but not iced. But they could clearly feel the cold on their way to the briefing room. It was a joint debriefing, as two of their pilots were now stuck in Solis Ortus. Only S/VTOL crafts could land there. The best opportunity to retrieve them would be to wait until Directus was taken and pick them through the railway.

" This aerial bridge operation was a success. Solis Ortus has been liberated, and soon the whole republic of Ustio will be. Today we obtained victory, despite our losses." Koenig said, with the map of Solis Ortus filled only by blue dots instead of red ones during the mission briefing.

" And our wounds." Francis added, his wounded foot in a caster.

" The medics report that you will not be able to fly for at least a week." Johnson began the bad news.

But it was not him who would announce the worst news. In fact, despite having retrieved the Axe and Hammer factory in Aarlon, they could not have many supplies here due to the low number of cargo craft available. And of course, the Osean front was terribly in need of supplies after the long siege of Wesson. After the debriefing, Koenig patched them on the event which occurred there. Hopefully no Wesson-UFOs were deployed or even sighted, but there again Belkans never went down without gruesome fights. All great lakes which were connected by canals to the Futuro canal had been turned into marine graveyard by the massive usage of mines, especially in the tight canals connecting the lakes between each others.

This time again, like a month ago, it was Herr Steller who brought the worst news.

" Steller, when you show up during end of briefing, it's always to bring issues." Pixy pointed out, before the chief of the maintenance crews had the time to say anything.

" Sadly, it's the case. We have no weapon or material issue to repair the planes, but a time issue on our hands."

" Why do we have such an issue? It's not like we were going to take back Directus tomorrow." Iskanda asked, sharing what she considered to be nothing but a foolish assumption.

" Mater de facto yes. The high command had decided we take back Directus ASAP for oblivious reason. One, Solis Ortus was not the better point to take, the city being landlocked and without airport. It was more a symbolic victory than a strategic one. Furthermore, the Belkan could launch others armored trains if we do not react quick. And Directus has now a brand-new rebuilt military airport, as the Belkan had to reconstruct the former we blew up to delay their ground assault." Johnson explained the current situation. Despite facing two global superpowers, Belka was still inflicting massive losses, and the Belkan forces would need only one failure of the allied forces to fight back.

" When did you learn that?" Fred wondered, not understanding why they only brought that thing now.

" Just one quarter of hour ago, we deciphered an encrypted message of the allied GHQ in Oured." Johnson replied.

" And we prefer to avoid sharing it over the waves for discretion issues." Koenig apologized for having kept this under secrecy.

" Ja, und all of this has brought us one damned time issue. We cannot, even if we worked all night long, repair four heavily damaged fighters and two moderately hit ones for the attack of Directus tomorrow. Also, Amiral, it's up to you to decide." Herr Steller exposed the great amount of punishment their fighters received today.

" I see. Repair the Galm team. Sorry for the Halo squad, but I have already two downed pilots and I don't want any more. Osea said in the encrypted message they were going to send some CAS squadron who did great today in Wesson, they will need aerial support. Now, dismissed, peoples, and be ready for the liberation of Directus tomorrow." Koenig concluded the briefing.

He saw the pilots left the briefing room, some with sad faces as they just learned they won't be there to liberate the city they lost two month ago. At least they had the possibility to rest a bit. Because him won't. He had a battle to plan, as they would need the long-range air defenses to be downed to call in the urban CAS squadron. And right now, he only had problems, without any solution.

Hopefully for the pilots, the radio crew manage to get them a video link with the temporary base in Solis Ortus, allowing them to talk with the downed Komyeta pilots.

" I'm sorry we cannot speak about the next op, Thesermeister." Pixy said when the latter asked how the debriefing went.

" I see. But it did not require to be a tactician to understand the obvious." Thesermeister replied.

" How is the weather?" Viviana asked an innocent question, as they couldn't talk that much about military operation on this not very encrypted line.

" Always better than at Valais. It would be hard to have a worse weather." Alekseï replied.

" And how is it with your Kameraden ?" Pixy wanted to know how official Yuktes were seeing Yukte mercs. He knew that some Belkan officials had respect for their mercenary counterparts, but they could be count on a severely wounded hand.

" Quite good. They are too young to know the roots of the war in Romney, so kein problem you would say." Thesermeister answered, being at ease when he thought he would be judged by his countrymen.

" And they have brought some good vodka in their survival rations." Alekseï added, showing a bottle of the Yukte ''little water''.

" You're lucky then. Have a good rest. I hope train worker will be striking today." Pixy said, implying it would be good not to face another armored train or even worse another RTLS tomorrow.

They even talked with some Osean and Yukte paras, which mostly congratulated them for their support, even forgiving them their failure at protecting the Antonov. The crew had managed to bail out before the crash. They hadn't been found yet, but this was always some losses less.

After these long talks and a good meal, the pilots could finally rest. All? Well, not all, as at sometime late on the night Iskanda was awakened by a crazy idea and immediately went to talk about it with Koenig. Yet, what is the difference between craziness and genius?

 **End of chapter. I change the mission because I found it without major difficulties, even in ace. Or is Pixy too good at doing his job in this mission? I don't know. So i turned a bit the tide… Feel free to like, comment, review, follow and subscribe  
01/08/2019: some grammatical mistakes fixed...**

 **13/01/2020: some more grammatical mistakes fixed using word...**


	10. Chapter 6: Operation Constantine

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 15:30, Weather: light cloud coverage, light risk of snow.**

Today the base was more a crazy anthill than anything, with the forklifts of the maintenance crews doing back and forth travel on the snowed tarmac between the supplies and Galm squadron's hangar. The lines they left in the snow had almost something artistic, looking like grey arabesques on a white fabric.

Gone was the silence of those mountains too, with the movements of all those vehicles. And repairing aircraft wasn't quiet either.

But since 15:00 silence was back at the base. Because it was time for the briefing. A briefing where there was as much officers as pilots, as the two aircraft composing the Galm team had been the only ones to be fixed.

The map was centered on Directus, as today was the day of its liberation. Five red dots were symbolizing each battalion of the occupation forces, each on one sector of Directus. There was a first on the south near the railway station. A second a bit further on the Crescere River. A third which comprised both historic center and new center. And two others on the north, forming the rearguard of the Belkan occupation forces.

" The city of Directus is divided in five sectors along the Crescere River. Each sector has been heavily fortified, especially the first one with the railway station." Koenig began the briefing, only to be interrupted by Pixy at the end of his phrase.

" Sir, by heavily fortified, you mean something harder to destroy than the SAMs, Tanks, APCs, TripleAs and BAWS we have destroyed so far?" Pixy asked, expecting the Belkan to be ready for one hell of a fight.

" By heavily fortified I mean you could encounter others RTLSs in the railway station. And I believe that so far it was quite hard to destroy, Solo wing." Koenig retorted, displaying schematics of the Railway Tactical Laser System.

" Sorry admiral." Pixy apologized. He had been so shocked by their encounter with this weapon he almost forgot there could be dozens of those in every city Belka was occupying right now.

" Let's resume the briefing. Resistance fighters transmitted that multiple ace squadrons and squadrons of high-tech fighters has been sent to Directus. Furthermore, the park behind the railway station would be housing half a dozen of BAWS." Koenig displayed this area which was the key to enter in Directus.

" Let me guess, admiral, the Osean CAS squadron cannot operate with those BAWS still online?" Pixy was trying to figure how they could get there unnoticed by the Belkan net.

" Exactly. And this is why your leader came with some crazy plan which could allow us to destroy the RTLS in the railway station and the BAWS near it." Koenig replied, letting Iskanda explain her crazy idea.

" Thanks. Johnson, display the railway from Solis Ortus to Directus." Iskanda inquired.

The said portion was displayed quickly. Ten kilometers of tunnels and bridges through the mountains. Then forty kilometers in plain sight. The trickiest part was that those railways were modified for the new electric trains. In other words, Iskanda would have to fly between the rail and the catheters.

" I will fly through the tunnels and stay glued to the ground until the railway station. I should get unnoticed if their radar is higher than the station or behind the latter." She explained, and the travel was shown on the screen. Of course, she had forgotten to mention that two kilometers before the railway station began a smaller tunnel who went below the newer parts of Directus.

" Have you lost your mind?" Was the reaction of Pixy to such a crazy scheme.

" I don't think so. Mine is only already rent to the devil since a few months." She retorted with repartee.

" So, your airplane has been equipped with some forward advanced cams, at the cost of one of your guns. You will have night goggles too." Koenig reported the few adjustments she ordered for her next mission.

" Well, I think I'll just wait with the Osean near Solis Ortus, flying through tunnels for nearly ten kilometers is way too crazy for me." Pixy expressed again his feeling toward the foolishness of this plan. If throwing a FAEB in mid-air was a 9 on ten on the scale of craziness, flying through tunnels should be above the number of particles in the universe at least.

" Gut. We will wait with you, my dear. And if you obtain victory - no wait, you must obtain victory- we will celebrate it in our new airport the Belkans just finished rebuilding in Directus, so you won't have to return here." Koenig ended the briefing, emphasizing the mandatory victory for today.

" I hope multiverses exist." was Iskanda's response when Pixy scaled her plan in matter of craziness. " Because I have ideas way crazier than this one, but I will keep them for later."

Even if it would be an air-to-air and air-to-ground op, she chose to go full air-to-ground, taking 4 LAGMs and 4 static FAEBs. The latter had some multipurpose capabilities, but they would never be as efficient as the MPBMs the Wesson-UFOs carry .And one minute later, after having obtained the take-off authorization from Blaise, along with his best encouragements, they were in the air, heading toward Solis Ortus again. The main difference was that yesterday they were eight instead of two. They hoped that at least the promised Osean CAS squadron would pack some punch, or they would never have the necessary firepower to take back the capital city of Directus.

 **Solis Ortus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:00, Weather: clear, little cloud coverage.**

They quickly arrived where the Osean were waiting with a tanker. Even if they only used a third of their fuel, they still refueled in mid-air, not wanting to run out of fuel over enemy airspace. The promised CAS squadron was made of six Mirage 2000s with a light green two-tone camo, featuring a low observable blazon made of dark claws. It was kind of rare to see Osean using such planes, their CAS squadron mainly comprised of E4-6B Prowler or A-10A Warthog.

" This is Claw leader to Galm, we were waiting for you. What's the plan?" The Osean leader asked, a bit impatient.

" Eagle Eye here, displaying foreseen battle plan." The AWACS operator transmitted the plan, which was quite simple by itself : Galm 1 would fly in the tunnels and clear out the long range ground-to-air defenses, then all the other planes would come in to suppress all Belkan occupation Forces within the city and its airspace. Retaking the city without too much damage was crucial. Koenig did not want to liberate a pile of ashes and rubble.

" You gotta be crazy to draw such mad schemes." Claw 5 said, as he saw what Galm 1 was up to.

" Whatever. Fortune favors the bold. Goodbye folks." Iskanda cut short this in-flight briefing, before diving toward the tunnels from where the armored trains came one day ago.

" Roger. Maintain radio silence until you reach Directus." The AWACS imposed.

" It's not like radio would go through the mountains." Iskanda said, switching on her recently added frontal sensor array and putting the night vision goggles they gave her. Immediately all in her field of sight became green, and a few seconds after she finally entered the tunnel, her radio went static.

" This is up to her now. I hope this Sainte Victoire is looking up on her right now." Pixy said, wishing to obtain victory today. In the tunnel, Iskanda was progressing steadily, flying at low speed to keep good maneuverability. It was a well built one, with double tracks allowing two trains to go on each direction and few turns hopefully. Sometimes she was outside of the said tunnel for a few seconds, when the railway was crossing valleys before going back in the heart of the mountains. She just had one fear: that a train would enter in it before she went out.

Furthermore, flying with night goggles wasn't very easy. The overall green effect didn't help either. Few times she honestly thought she would touch the walls of the tunnel, but she managed to turn right on time. The very short wings of her X-29A helped greatly now. If she was flying a bigger plane, like the F-15C of Pixy, she would have died because of its greater turn rate. Still, she would not fly in the dark forever. And to be precise, the tunnel wasn't all that dark, with at some point lights on emergency hideouts and other signals there were usually in civilian tunnels.

 **Solis Ortus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:08.**

" Still no response. I hope she's right." Pixy said, a bit worried for his leader.

" I bet she's having fun. But still, I hope this kind of strategy won't be needed any time soon too. Far too much contingencies." Koenig replied from aboard the AWACS.

" Hem, this is the 101st you helped yesterday, remember us?" An Osean voice spoke.

" Of course, we do. What's the matter?" The AWACS operator asked.

" We managed to put some light vehicles on a transport train, and we should be able to help retake Directus." The Osean commander of the unit said.

" Great. I think you can leave right now; I mean, a transport train will not catch up with a fighter any time soon." Koenig agreed to let them follow Iskanda. Still, they would need a good forty minutes to reach the area.

They enjoyed this new change of forces, yet their joy did not last long. An encrypted message from some resistance fighters in Directus put an end to the silence.

" Deciphering message..." The AWACS operator announced, and thirty seconds later its contents was available.

" Damn it, there's an armored train entering the tunnel right now. But Iskanda must be right there now too. Let's hope she would be able to cross his path without being stuck in the tunnel." The worrying intel was revealed.

 **Tunnel of Solis Ortus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:09.**

Her greatest fear of getting stuck in this tunnel was very likely going to happen if she doesn't act soon. She could already see on her radar the train approaching the entrance of the tunnel. And they weren't planning to decelerate. An armored train could withstand being hit by a fighter, but not the other way around. So, she speeded up a bit, and locked two LAGMs on the train.

Then she kept flying over the right part of the tunnel, as the Belkan train was coming by the left railway. She was blinded by the sudden explosion which destroy the pilot post of the train but did not stop its forward motion at all. She was even more blinded by the bright light of the outside with her night goggles that at one point she wondered if she hadn't collided with the train, and if all this brightness she was seeing was only the death pulse of her brain.

No angel or demon welcomed her in this brightness. Only the "Pull up" alarm did.

" For once I'm happy to hear you, annoying system." She mused, as she was now flying between the railway and the catheters, precisely in the middle of the two-way line to avoid hitting the cables.

 **Directus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:15, Weather: high stratus.**

She was lucky the Belkans did not send any more armored trains. Still, flying in the thin space between the railway and the catheters was not an easy task. Maybe it was even easier to fly in the tunnel, as the current was delivered through the rails there, without the need of catheters. So, she was flying in subsonic, the tail of her airplane between the two rows of cables. Numerous time there were curves in her path, and she had to turn with a perfect timing, using bow yaw and roll axis. She knew what would happen if she went too fast or too slow. She would hit the conductive cables. And she would not take a little spark. It was not some 10 amperes 230 volts in those cable. More of thousands of volts and thousands of amperes. No fighter could withstand such electric shock. Even a full shot of a RTLS's main gun would be less destructive. Hopefully for her, no one was on the railway, no other armored train, not a single person on the bridges above it. Maybe the Belkans were restraining civilian transportations and for this reason no one was in the vicinity.

The only lifeforms she saw were some birds in the sky above her. When she finally arrived after ten minutes of intensive flight at the second tunnel, she authorized herself to feel some relief. Because she wouldn't have the time to even sigh when she would be in the clear.

 **Directus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:25.**

The second tunnel allowed her to be unnoticed at least. But she thought she would emerge right on the railway station, after flying below the newest parts of Directus. She was horribly mistaken in her foreseeing of her arrival. She arrived in the open, but the tunnel ended two kilometers before the station. It was meant for the passenger to be in the light when taking their luggage before arrival, and to appreciate the row of majestic trees set up alongside the railway.

The railway station was a massive building made of white stone with great glass doors and a nice glass cupola with a steel structure. It was built over the railway, or maybe they used one pre-existing building and bored the railway through the hill the station was standing on. Before the railway station there was a route connecting the two newest parts of Directus together.

Right now, the surprise was definitely over. Reinforcements would need at least a few minutes to arrive, and by reinforcements she meant only Pixy, as his F-15C could match the speed of a MiG-31. Still she would be alone to face the planes above the railway station.

" Ustian fighter sighted. Spinne (spider) squadron, dive and intercept before she reached the station." The commander of one parked RTLS below the station ordered.

" Spinne leader Ver." The leader of a squadron comprised of three Sukhoi 47 replied before diving quickly, hoping to catch this Erusean merc before she could inflict any damage to their forces below the railway station. Those three fighters bore a standard black camo with white nose, however with decals of white webs on the black camo.

" Let's see if our little sparring session of last week with Gault squad was useful." The number 2 said, following his leader alongside the number three.

Unfortunately for Iskanda, the railway was dividing as it came closer to the station, this allowing her three pursuers to come at the same level. She couldn't evade six SAAMs coming from three different angles for long. She only saw one manner of saving her skin here. Yet it was highly hazardous, and she could be destroyed too.

" Nur ein bisschen mehr." (Just a little bit more) Spinne 3 said, having some trouble targeting the X-29A who was doing some horizontal yo-yo maneuver with her tail rudder.

But he never had this little bit more. Because she inverted and fired on the catheters while in a yawing motion. Not all cables were punctured, but their insulators, those small glass discs were utterly destroyed. The belly radar of Iskanda was hit hard by the lightnings born of the insulators and was shut off by the electric shock. The small screen who was displaying its reading went black, as its fuses blew. Her aircraft was now smelling burned metal as she inverted back. She had lost her belly radar, but it was always better than the fate of the three Sukhois trailing her.

If they were called the Spinne squad, their doom was definitely some twist of fate. The overloaded insulators created some sort of electrical web. And they were too fast to maneuver in time. The three Berkuts exploded in a matter of microsecond, understanding too late why Kupchenko warned them of the unconventional tactics this Erusean might use.

After winning this short battle she finally arrived at the station. Two RTLS were standing there. Oddly they weren't firing on her immediately. Maybe they had some maintenance issue or were hindered by sabotage, she didn't know, and had no time to lose in dithering. She fired one LAGM on each of their central section, and one standard missile shorty after. By luck, their armor was more oriented for anti-air tactics. This meant their lateral armor was weaker. Her LAGMs pierced through enough to allow her missiles to explode inside the RTLSs. And as she went out of the railway station on the other way, she could see both of them explode. The violent explosion didn't seem to shake the building that much.

" Was passiert?" Shouted the Belkan Sturmbannführer (Major) in charge of the occupation forces in Directus.

" Apparently, an Ustian fighter broke through the network and destroyed the two remaining RTLSs." An officer quickly responded, doing his best to keep his cool.

" Fighters in the Railway Station Area, shoot her down. The BAWS mustn't be destroyed." The Major ordered.

" Oh, believe me, they are already doomed." Iskanda spoke over the "Ver" of the Belkan pilots, who were diving toward her yet too late. She had already turned after the railway, seeing a bit the big clock tower with its nose cone in copper which turned green through time. The big clock indicated perfectly the time, visible even from a fighter: 16:26. And now she was right over the park near the station. Eight BAWS were standing in its center, in four pairs around a small fountain. Three AA guns were protecting them, but it was not enough. Furthermore, the BAWS couldn't shot this close without risking endangering themselves.

In her first run she managed to destroy two BAWS and the AA guns, but not without taking some hits. Nothing serious, but it wasn't helping when she had to avoid a XLAA volley fired from a squadron of F-15S/MTDs in her second run. They had the classic active camo, with white body and black nose, but their stripes where red and yellow instead of red and blue. Luckily, as she fooled them by flying very close to the ground, between the fountain and the BAWS, the lost XLAAs took out three more launchers.

But as she tried to get in position, the four F-15S/MTDs were already in range for their missiles. And another squadron, this time of Typhoon, was closing fast. Not giving to her fear, she chose to go head-on but inverted, this position hindering a bit their lock-on capacities.

" Fox 2" The Belkan squadron said of one voice. This time their missiles barely missed her, hitting trees of the park below instead. Yet her shot was successful. The one at the left was shot down. His airplane exploded in mid-air shortly after, sparing the city of damage.

" Zwei and Drei, keep her down. I will do some guillotine." Their leader ordered.

Yet they didn't have the need to force her to fly low, as she was going for a third strafing run on the three remaining BAWS. One was quickly destroyed by a pair of missiles. She was about to strafe the two others when she saw the F-15S/MTD diving for her.

" It will be like crushing some mosquito. They fly nicely but live short." The Belkan judged her fate. He was responsible for the loss of five member of Halo squad.

Yet he forgot that mosquitoes are often more agile than expected. She pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver, interrupting her run before executing a loop toward the Belkan fighter. He was slowly leveling his fighter in order to avoid hitting the ground, but she was faster. He almost managed to level, with the stall alarm blaring when a single gun burst hit him. His vectored nozzles were ruined, and he fell to the ground without any chance to recover. And right on the BAWS, to make matter worse.

A bit taken aback by the loss of their leader, the two Belkan pilots hesitated a little. Yet a little was already enough time for Iskanda to rush on one after her semi-loop. She arrived on his two hours, and even with one gun it was still powerful enough to blow it up in sky high. Then her alarm blared. The last F-15S/MTD had kept his trajectory and fired an XLAA from long range. Evading it was easy for the Erusean merc, before she went for an Himmelman.

" You cannot fight alone against more than forty aircraft." The Belkan try to disturb her with thoughts of failure, but it was not enough to frighten her. This number was not frightening, but more exciting to her ears.

" And you cannot win against a single one." She retorted before diving, targeting a point below his airplane. Two IR-guided missiles flew very close above her as she crossed his line of fire. Then she extended her airbrakes, and as her whole airplane was shaken by her stall, she pulled the trigger. The right wing of the Belkan fighter was ripped off.

" And there's only one solo wing." She said, after leveling up her fighter and quickly going on the six hours of the now highly damaged fighter, before ending his misery by one missile.

" I will avenge Fleischer!" The Belkan leader of the squadron composed of eight Typhoon threatened her. They had a camo comprised of a white fuselage and black wingtips, with a balance bearing a dagger and a pair of cuffs on each plate. His squadron quickly armed their XLAAs, but they lost track of her as she flew below the railway station.

" Richter 3 to leader, where did she go?" One pilot asked, his radar enable to see through the thick stone of the railway station.

" Entscheidung und Umgebung!" (Separate and circle around) The leader shouted.

They all kicked their afterburners, enacting this strategy against low flying or stealth aircrafts. Four remain in the center of the formation, while two group of two went for the side, positioning themselves in the third and nine hours of the merc when she would climb. However, she had slowed a bit her speed while flying below the runway. Matter de facto, when she climbed back to the sky, the crafts on the side where crossing their path, and the four in the center were doing a perfectly coordinated Himmelman to be again in firing position.

But Richter leader underestimate the climb rate of the tuned X-29A. He did not believe Kupchenko was bested by this pathetic fleeing merc. So, when she did climb back, they missed their shot by one or two dozen meters. Yet if they only missed to trail her it would have been fine. Indeed, they failed in another task: to look for their surroundings.

" Es gibt keine Justiz, nur Vergeltung." (There's no justice, only vengeance) Iskanda said, as the Typhoons began to climb toward her. But for them it was too late. The static FAEBs blew up the entire squadron to smithereens.

The third squadron sent to her encounter, and who witnessed this brutal death, were feed by Vergeltung too. But the five F-14D were so filled by vengeance they did not see a lone F-15C firing a volley of XMAAs from high altitude.

" Thanks Pixy." She said, recognizing her partner on the IFF.

The only surviving Tomcat tried to climb in order to fire his XLAAs on Pixy. But the Eagle was faster than him. And while the XLAAs were quite easy to avoid for the F-15C, only one QAAM was needed to destroy the Tomcat.

" Here I am, your Belkan knight in his shiny duraluminium armor." Pixy broke the radio silence as he leveled his aircraft at the same altitude than his partner.

" Don't take me for a Fraulein in distress." She retorted with disdain.

" Jeez, take it easy Galm 1. You just destroy fifteen aircraft without any support. Now we have to secure the sky for the Claw squadron." He reminded her of their first mission objective, which was not besting the longest inside flight in the Guinness Book.

" Eagle Eye to Galm, Claw squadron ETA 10 minutes." The AWACS announced, the attackers flying at their maximal operational speed of two thousand kilometers per hour.

 **Ustio, Directus, 13/05/1995, 16:35.**

They were flying over some older parts of Directus, heading toward the AA guns and SAMs they needed to take out. And squadrons of MiG-29As, F-14Ds, F-15Cs and Sukhoi 27s were waiting for them, one or two squadron above each sector.

Of course, the first sector was free of any aerial threats, as its defensive squadron were the Typhoons and the five Tomcats they just destroyed.

" Pixy, there are only APCs left in this area. the Claw squadron should be able to deal with them." Iskanda said, keeping her trajectory toward the second sector.

" I agree. We have no air-to-ground weaponry anyway." Her wingmen responded, following her. The second sector was quite an old one, build around one main road. Four AA guns were set on the said road, while two pairs of SAMs shielded a weapon deposit on the east of the road and a group of Flaks, a tank battalion.

" I'm on the SAMs." She said, after they destroyed the four Triple As with one missile each. However, the two last were a bit further away than the two first, and for this reason the Galm team took some hits while dealing with them.

" Verdammt, I have holes in my left wing." Pixy swore, as he went on the Flaks, flying tilted in a thin street between some houses.

Some shutters were ripped off by the thrust of his fighter, but this way he was out of reach of the four Flaks canon. Two missiles and a short strafing run were enough to destroy them. Some tanks were hit by the flying debris, but they were still standing.

The weapon deposits were reused tunnel voussoiring. She definitely knew she would need something with more explosive charge than her standard missile to destroy them. It was going to be left for Claw squadron GPBs.

" Wo ist diese verdammte X-29A?" A servant of the SAM unit asked.

" Went too low to be seen. We are on a small cliff in the middle of a urban forest, remember?" The Lieutenant of this unit responded.

Indeed, when expanding, Ustians -or oriental Belkans in the older history books- had left some pieces of forest in good shape, ensuring a bit of green for the outskirt of Directus. And it was somewhat easy for a mobile fighter to fly in the forest corridors to the SAMs, unnoticed to its servants.

" Ich hörte etwas." (I heard something) Another servant said.

" You only heard the sound of death coming for you." Galm 1 replied, as she flew a bit above the clear where they were, before unleashing her missiles and strafing the remaining SAMs.

Still, the weapon deposit was unarmed. And to make matter worse, a squadron of eight Fulcrum was approaching fast. But on the bright side the Claw squadron was only at one minute from the first sector.

" Kapitän, let's turn those Mirages into real mirages." A Belkan pilot said in his Fulcrum with a light brown camo and grey ailerons.

" Eagle Eye to Galm, take down those Fulcrums. Prevent them to reach SAAMs range on the Mirages." The AWACS operator ordered.

" Right on them. Pixy, weapon free." She turned to engage the enemy squadron.

Pixy did not lose his time and joined with her in a head-on attack. They managed to evade the few SAAMs the Fulcrums fired at them, before killing four of them with gun and missiles head-on. The remnants shattered, with two turning back to get on the six of the Ustian crafts, while two others hit the burners to try to get in SAAMs range.

" Pixy, go take care of those two before they go into SAAMs spam mode on the Mirages. Those two are mine." Galm 1 suggested, her wingmen being equipped with long range weaponry.

" Ver, Kapitänin." He replied in his mother tongue, before dashing toward the Belkans, bypassing the two who were engaging them head-on.

For one moment the Belkan showed reluctance to follow this one. Yet as Pixy flew in front of Iskanda on this approach, this allow her to get closer, a bit hidden by the bigger shape of his Eagle. The Belkan eventually fired their missiles, but they were shot for trash when Galm 1 did a quick dive below their firing line and climbed back a bit below them. Then she opened fire, taking one with a gun burst and firing her missiles on the other. This one managed to evade a direct hit, but with his cell in critical state he wasn't able to escape her for long and fell to some gunfire.

Pixy on the other side quickly caught the two Belkans, firing a pair of XMAAs. One managed to evade by pulling a cobra at the last moment, but this left him in a precarious situation, as post-stall maneuvers usually deprived planes of their speed to critical levels. Pixy took advantage of this and was soon in missile range, even if the Fulcrum was now in missile range for the Claw squadron too. But he was far too busy evading the missiles of this tenacious merc to get a proper lock on them. And he was even too distracted to see one Mirage firing a pair of air-to-air missiles head-on.

" Claw 3, gotcha." The Osean pilot said with a happy voice.

" Claw leader to 3, let the merc do their job. And go destroy the ammo storage Galm 1 sighted." The strict leader ordered.

" Well, thanks for the help. But I've to go now, the modernized center of Directus is full of SAMs." Pixy said, leaving the Mirage the second sector, as they had finished dealing with the APCs in the first one.

 **Directus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:42.**

When Pixy arrived on the zone, he saw Iskanda flying between some of the few skyscrapers Directus possess. At their feet were three SAMs, difficult to destroy due to the restrained area, rendering evasive maneuver very hard, giving the risk of hitting one nearby building. But she managed to take them down anyway. In the meantime, Pixy sighted and destroyed a SAM site and a few tents near a partially finished building.

" And now you need the help of Mirages to shot down two Fulcrums." She mocked him a bit.

" Missile alert!" Her lock-on alarm blared.

Two SAMs launcher were targeting her from the parvis of the massive Sainte Victoire cathedral, pride of Gothic architecture in former South oriental Belka. Just the wooden doors seemed big enough to let a fighter enter in. And the two bell towers in the front were massive too, maybe bigger than the clock tower of the railway station. She dived to lose their shots and then fired two missiles at the launchers, but they were intercepted in mid-air by some SPKs surrounding the launchers.

" Damn it. We are not in great number to launch a saturation attack, and i don't think the Mirages are agile enough for one anyway." She cursed the commander of this unit for being smart for once.

" Yeah, we are kinda stuck here." Pixy confirmed. However, as she flew near the flying buttress of the cathedral to evade a missile, an idea came to her mind. It was not as hazardous as firing on catheters, but still with a high risk.

" Pixy, try to distract those launchers. I think I've found a vector of approach." She said, while heading for the back of the cathedral.

" Ver, what are you up to?" He asked while firing two missiles who were trashed by the Belkan SPKs.

" This." She responded, flying in the tight space between the flying buttress and the wall of the cathedral. At some point she saw some of its stained-glass windows. Still with her speed, and above all with her mind focused on not dying by hitting a pillar, she didn't have the time to admire then, but definitely they were quite nice. This cathedral seemed to be worth visiting after the victory - because she only planned victory for today-.

" I don't know if I need to congratulate her or blame her for having such mad schemes." Pixy mused, firing another pair of missiles after he did a little loop to evade the Belkan fire.

The third time he attacked them, he saw the thin silhouette of the X-29A rushing from the tight space where she had flown, before diving gun blazing on the SAMs and SPKs. This time their attack was carried out successfully, and the four Belkan vehicles destroyed. They were about to go attack the last SAMs sites in the area, which were sighted as priority one target, this set of SAM having longer range and increased accuracy, set up in the cloister of some convent, along with some transport chopper, but a squadron of seven F-15Cs attacked them.

Pixy knew XMAAs would not have great effect on the mobile fighter the Eagle was. After all, he flew this aircraft since almost ten years now. He knew everything about it, from its weakness to its strength, while passing by the fuel consumption of its afterburners. So like Iskanda he went head-on, but from above instead of from below. They were painted with a dark navy-blue camo and black stripes.

"Chaos Schaft, haften sie auf oder die Stadt ist verloren." (Chaos squad, stop them or the city is lost)

" Ver, Sturmbannführer (major)." The leader replied.

They were immediately engaged head-on by the Galm squad. Volleys of QAAMs and XMAAs were fired upon the Ustian crafts, but none find their target. However, as they were switching back to standard missiles the two Ustian craft managed to slip through their fire and destroy two of their aircrafts.

" Verdammt Söldner. Du wirst fall unten die Macht der Chaos." The leader threatened the Galm team, but without much effect on their morale.

" We are the one that are bringing chaos here. Not you." Pixy retorted but was cut in his line as he had to evade the fire of two Eagle trailing him.

Iskanda on the other side had three F-15C trailing her. She knew she could only outrun them for a few seconds, as they had more powerful engine than hers, but they had lost quite a bit of their speed when turning sharply at 180 degrees to get on her six. She decided to go for an all-out attack. Pulling a head-to-tail maneuver, she was in no time in the twelve of the Belkan leader. She fired her missiles while evading his by a barrel-roll to the left. Then she extended her airbrakes as a F-15C was rushing toward her, doing a sharp ninety-degree turn. Arriving right on his nine hours, she gunned him, before chasing the last of her pursuer, who was fleeing at Mach 2.

Pixy was heading toward her last pursuer too, but only to escape his. He fired his last two XMAAs at him, and one of them find its mark. Yet the two trailing him were gaining ground, but Iskanda was now turning to engage them.

" Ready for this Pixy?" She asked, before laughing a bit, as she knew the Belkan couldn't see her coming until too late.

" I'm always ready, buddy." He replied, flying steadily as the X-29A rushed toward him tilted in a ninety-degree angle.

" Wohin gehst-du, Söldnerin?" (Where are you going, she-merc?") The astonished Belkan pilot wondered what this merc was up to.

But those wonders came too late. When they understood what was going on, they both switched to QAAMs. But she was too fast even for this armament, and their missiles were shot for trash. Yet Iskanda's were successful, as she fired before diving inverted to escape the QAAMs. Two missile struck Chaos 5, while Chaos 4 was hit by gun fire on his left engine as she climbed back. He tried to flee but was met by one missile from his front - as Pixy pulled up an Himmelman after Iskanda crossed his path- and one from the back as Galm leader did a quick loop toward him after a small climb. The fighter only plummeted for two seconds before exploding.

" Gott Verdammt, Stadt ist verloren. Bereit den Hubschrauber!" (Ready the chopper.) The Sturmbannführer of Directus shouted, fleeing from his office in the occupied convent to the heliport in its cloister.

" The Belkan commander is running scared, apparently." Pixy commented, as the CH-47 took off, on a vector to the North.

" Abweichler (renegade) firing." A Belkan SAM commander went rogue as the Belkan commander was fleeing.

Three missiles from the SAMs positioned on the roof of the convent struck the chopper, which exploded immediately. Some gun fire was heard on the radio, along with Belkan insults and screams of wounded men. Tracers fired between the convent and the outside of it were seen. But all this infighting didn't last. Then a voice was heard, surprisingly with an Ustian accent:

" Abweichler to Galm, the former South Oriental Belkan artillery group will joined with the Ustians."

" Hervin, is that you? I know you were alive." Koenig welcomed his former brother of arms.

He knew he couldn't flee at the time of the change of government, but he never was a great supporter of the Rald Partei. After all he was from Ustio, geographically speaking.

" Ich bin froh du bist hier heute. Beginning long range fire on the Belkan reinforcements. I take full responsibility of us joining the sixth Ustian Unit." Hervin said, the SAMs turning toward the Belkan fighters in the North.

The green targets were now labelled as "frnd" for friendly unit, and their color turned blue. They would not take many fighters down, but they would ease the work of the Ustian fighters. And at this very moment, the Osean troops which were coming through the railway had made it to the center of Directus. They had managed to slip through the first and second sector almost unarmed thanks to the preventive suppression of Belkan position by Claw squadron.

Resistance fighters armed with recent or older weapon began firing on the scattered Belkan forces, while the bells of Saint Victoire were rung at full force.

" What are doing those civilians? And stop me those bells... argh." A Belkan officer who was seeing the scene from the northern area was shot down by the Luger of some resistance fighter, as he was peeking outside his tank. The tank was overwhelmed, and his crew slaughtered, even if this fight cost some lives. But it was war, and all Ustians wanted to liberate their capital.

" We gotta take the city! We have to take things into our own hands!" A resistance team leader claimed, and a few second later, as the Claw squadron were approaching a light column of Belkan vehicles stationed in an highway between modernized city center and the northern sectors, the tanks, APCs and trucks were hit by some projectile, ever Molotov cocktails or more explosive one, maybe some dynamite. The Claw Squadron just flew above the burning trucks and damaged tanks, finishing the latter with their guns to avoid hitting resistance fighters.

" Let's take back our city. Ring the bell of freedom harder!" Another resistance member shouted through the radio of a retaken Belkan tank.

" That's a sound I like to hear." Iskanda commented the loud sound of all the bells in the twin bell towers of Sainte Victoire being rung along the bells of all the others smaller churches in the city.

" Finish the Belkan troops in the North, Galm team. Resistance fighters and some Osean commandos are approaching the airport as we speak, we will land there after the victory." The AWACS announced, confident in the fate of this battle.

A last push of four Belkan Su-32s with sandy camo was the last major Belkan offensive action of the battle, heading for the convent where the Abweichler unit was, firing some LAGMs on its advanced SAMs who had already shot down six F-14Ds in the northern sector, while five other Tomcats were shot down by the Galm team.

" Abweichler to Galm, we need help, now." Hervin shouted, not wanting to die when he was finally doing what he wanted to do: protecting the land of his forefathers.

" I'll take care of them. Pixy, finish the last SAMs over the Technical Museum." Galm 1 ordered, preparing her static FAEB.

" Roger, viel Glück." Pixy nodded, heading toward the big metallic structure which housed some famous old Belkan technologies, mainly military ones.

" Schnell, Fraulein." Hervin repeated his call for help, seeing the four CAS aircraft slowly heading toward his position.

The X-29A was rushing toward his opponents, flying in a straight line, on PC max. And soon she reached the four CAS plane, before bypassing them, but not without letting them something to have fun with. Fun from her point of view of course.

" Bereit Bewaffnung. Verstört den Abweichler." (Ready weaponry; kill the Renegade) The leader of the four-plane squadron ordered, but before he could even lock to the convent, his whole squadron was destroyed in a bright explosion.

" Es ist ein Wunder. Danke Galm." Hervin congratulated the Erusean pilot, who was already heading to where her wingman was fighting.

But his fight was even shorter than her leader's. When he arrived over the museum, he witnessed one amazing scene. Three of the four SAMs on its parking had been taken out by what looked like tank fire, along with two Belkan APCs. But as he got closer his radar tagged a tank unknown for the modern database. However, Larry recognized it instantly: a Tiger II, this model being used in the second major conflict of this century between Osea and Belka, between the 1940's and the 1950's.

"What the hell are those resistance fighters doing?" Pixy thought, not very ready to see this kind of armament be used on actual battlefield rather than in historical movies. On the other side maybe, they just copied the Belkan who reused 75-millimeters cannons. Still, this tank model was like in the war it was designed: very vulnerable to air strikes. Two F-14Ds try to attack it with their GPBs, but Pixy was faster to react, and quickly shot both fighters with QAAMs.

" Hey, thanks above." Some resistance member said.

" Let me ask you one thing, Oberst. Why do we thought it was a good idea to retreat on the roof on the museum? And why does half of the old weaponry it housed are still usable after almost one century?" A soldier entrenched in some metallic staircase above the roof of the museum rhetorically asked to his commanding officer. He couldn't appreciate the irony of this moment, as their modern troop carrier were crushed by a fifty-year-old tank and nearly hundred years old Mauser rifles were firing from other emergency staircases similar on the one they were entrenched in.

" Belkan Qualität I guess. And the fact that they are often used for getting data for some war movies and games." The Oberst replied, ducked to evade the high caliber round Mauser fired.

" This is Brønsted to Galm. We have something to neutralize them, but we need air superiority, otherwise those Su-27s will trash our attempt." A Ustian voice said.

" This call was coming from a nearby university, the one of technology or chemistry maybe. Help them." The AWACS ordered, as the area to sanitize was set up on their radar.

" Always like chemistry. So much fun in blowing up things. Let's take care of the Flankers!" Galm 1 exclaimed herself, rushing toward the Belkan fighters in greyish two-tone camo with slightly whiter wings.

Yet they couldn't have foreseen the advancement Belkan scientist managed to create for those six fighters, maybe inspired by Iskanda's use of a belly radar to expand lock-on radius. This time however they had taken the advancement to a next level, well above Herr Steller skills.

" They have a rear facing radar!" Galm 2 realized when he saw one Flanker that he was pursuing firing a SAAM, before it went backward toward him. He managed to evade it by barrel-rolling, but this gave his target time to be outside of missile range, and he had no more XMAAs. Hopefully they were not firing QAAMs backward, he thought.

" Just gun it Pixy." His leader suggested as she just did it. The semi-active missile lost his guidance while she kept firing her gun on the engine, setting the enemy craft ablaze.

" They are only delaying the obvious." Pixy said, having recover from the surprise of those backward fired SAAMs. And he went back to the fireball, attacking a Flanker from the side. He hit him with his gun, but the Flanker was still flying after this attack. However the delay for the doom of the Belkan pilot wasn't long : in a matter of second Pixy was on his six, and as his rear-facing radar was hit by the bullets Galm 2 fired at him, he couldn't retaliate and was shot down quickly by a pair of missiles.

His leader just didn't take this update into consideration. She was pursuing two Su-27s, who decided to retaliate. But evading SAAMs was easy. Evading a high mobile fighter was not easy for them, even if she was almost on the verge of stalling every five seconds, she pursued them. Still, with only one gun she managed to get a good gun kill on the left one, and the right one tried to evade her missile by a Cobra, but this put him in harm's way. He underestimated her airbrakes, and while she extended them to keep him in her crosshairs, she pulled the trigger.

" Galm team, only two targets remaining." The AWACS operator sighted, as the two Sukhoi-27 were beginning to flee. They were maybe proud Belkans, but sometimes survival was getting above pride. Wasn't "to survive" the only rule to follow anyway?

" This will be dealt quickly." Pixy acknowledged as he kicked the burner, catching up with the Su-27 in no time.

The much quicker F-15C was now in the sixth of the Belkan fighter, and scored a gun kill on one Belkan fighter. However, the second one went from a Cobra, hoping to reciprocate the kill of this merc. But he never had the time to achieve this kill, as a tuned X-29A gunned him right after he leveled on the Belkan merc. The buffed-up engine of the prototype was definitely outclassing more potent fighter, but it would never be as efficient as the F-15C's. Flying over Mach 2 was now only memory aboard the Griffon for Iskanda.

" Eagle Eye to Brønsted, sky is clear. Launch whatever you're up to dislodge those last Belkan remnants." Johnson confirmed Galm team's victory.

" Brønsted Ver." The resistant member, and eminent professor of chemistry agreed with some other members to enact the gruesome tactic.

" Was bereiten diese Widerstanden?" The Belkan Oberst wondered, before seeing a little squadron of quadcopters taking off and heading toward his position.

During this time, the Claw squadron had closed toward the newly rebuilt airport. But despite the resistance fighters and the Osean commandos, the local Belkan defense were fighting to their last breath. And from semi-destroyed C-130 which were supposed to retreat with some assets in Belka went out a bunch of SAMs and Triple As which began to wreak havoc among the Osean squadron.

" Eagle Eye to Galm, Claw need some SEAD. Head to the airport, Brønsted is taking care of those remnants." Johnson ordered, seeing on his long-range radar the new three lane airport covered by small red dots.

" Galm 2, roger that. Nothing more incoming, or any surprise?" Pixy wondered, as they left the area. The quadcopters were halfway to the museum.

 **Directus International Airport, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:50, Weather: high cumulus.**

They were halfway to the airport when they heard some screams of pain at the radio. Belkan screams. The quadcopters had finally made their way to the last remnants of Belkan troopers. One Belkan tried to shoot down one, but exposed himself in doing so, and was gunned down by a resistance member. But maybe his fate was better than the one of his comrades.

" Argh, Aber es brennt, wie verrückt." (it burns like hell) The Belkan Oberst shouted, hit by some translucent liquid, after the quadcopter opened a small bay to drop glass chemical flasks. For him, it seemed like they put burning coal where his skin was hit by the sprayed chemicals, when the flasks hit the ground hard. He was the less hit but was still suffering like hell. Other were unconscious due to the pain or having breathed some of the brown gas this mysterious chemical began to produce when burning their skin, suit, or the metallic walls of their shelter.

Severely burned, the few Belkan quickly chose to surrender. They weren't hazmat troops meant to fight chemical warfare.

" What did you use, Brønsted?" Koenig wondered, seeing in high definition the brown cloud around the last Belkan entrenchment.

" I think I know what it is." Iskanda intervened, as she was getting over the airport. The Belkan rebuilt it with great care, as it was their base for launching their Bm-335Ns into Osea or Sapin. But now the three lanes were bordered solely by SAMs and AA guns, rendering all landing impossible. Pixy and her dived, while she was trying to remind some chemistry, she studied back at Farbanti.

" So was war's?" (what was it?) The admiral recalled, his knowledge in chemistry being a bit too old for now.

" Brønsted is the name of some scientist who worked on acids. I will take a shot and say it's nitric acid, the easiest to manufacture." She explained while shooting her missiles on a pair of SAMs. The two exploded, but some of their crew had the time to go out before the explosion and began firing at her with shoulder mounted SAMs. Climbing before doing a Split-S, she gunned them while they were reloading after some missed shots, while her Admiral was a bit taken aback by the fact their own citizen used chemical weaponry on the Belkans. He wouldn't have been surprised to see Belkans using them, but the other way around was quite unusual.

" This is Brønsted to sixth Unit, you're right, we used nitric acid." The resistance member acknowledged, fully knowing how painful it should have been for this Belkan soldier. Being burned by acids and then poisoned by dinitrogen, this brown cloud.

"Aren't chemicals banned by the last North Point convention?" Johnson asked, as frightened as his superior to see their forces using this.

" Well, it banned the use of sub-munitions, and as far as I know, the static FAEBs your merc are using are submunition weaponry." The resistance member retorted, knowing that more than often conventions became obsolete in wartime.

" We will see this issue later. How is the cleaning of the airport going?" Koenig asked to his mercs, seeing the red dots disappearing one after the other.

" Gut und schnell." Pixy quickly responded, as he was gunning the last AA guns. There were still some Flaks cannons, but the low flying Mirage dealt with them in no time after the close-range anti-air weaponry was destroyed, using their last XAGMs in order not to damage the runways.

 **Directus International Airport, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 16:50, Weather: high cumulus.**

The cleaning of the airport did not take much time, as there were only few assets which survived the initial onslaught on the taxiing C-130. Overwhelmed Belkan forces were quickly destroyed without causing a single loss to the allied forces. The few which tried to retreat back to the airport were caught off guard by resistance members and Osean commandos. But Belkans weren't ready to just give up this airport they had to rebuilt after the Ustians blew up everything in it, from the runway to the fuel storage. Yet the newly rebuilt airport was equipped with Belkan phase modulation radar able to detect stealth, in case Osea try to bomb them with their B-2As. And soon those new radars spotted an aerial threat.

" Directus International Airport to Eagle Eye, we have stealth incoming. Apparently, F-117As with a forward guard of YF-23s."

" These new generation Belkan radar are quite impressive. Galm team, focus on the Black Widows, Claw team, try to take out the Nighthawks." The AWACS ordered, guessing that even if these Mirage were no high-tier dogfighters, they could at least take F-117A if they managed to lock on to them.

" Roger, engaging the YF-23s." Galm 1 and 2 responded with a uniform voice.

The five YF-23s had a ghost livery, which gave them some low visibility, while the four F-117As spotted desert camouflage, which was quite hard to see as they were coming aligned with the sun, hindering all pilot's vision. Their armament was simple: QAAMs for the Black Widow to destroy all airborne allies, and LAGMs for the Nighthawk.

" Our army did not spend almost three weeks rebuilding this airfield so you could just take it back and use it whatever you want!" The leader of the YF-23s squadron shouted. At first his original assignment was just to escort those F-117As, refuel here and then destroyed the airborne troops stationed at Solis Ortus.

" Well, this is Ustian territory know. Let's hope Sainte Victoire is watching us today." Iskanda exclaimed, rushing toward the five stealth fighters.

The five YF-23s were above the two Ustian aircrafts. Still, the Black Widows were slightly slower than the two mercs. They fired QAAMs on the low flying Galm team, but they were shot for trash, as the mercs were truly flying very low, over some forests in the outskirt of Directus.

Then Pixy and Iskanda climbed behind them, but even at half altitude they were already targeted by the Widows again, which either did Split-Ss or Himmelmans to turn back at them. Barely evading their fire by inches, the two mercs kept climbing, before separating to pull a loop outward the Belkan formation, respectively arriving in the six hours of the aircrafts which fired at their external side just a few seconds ago. And they returned fire on their attackers, but as they were too focused on evading the gunfire and missiles of the Galm team, they were distracted in their respective twelve hours and one hit the other as he was evading a missile by barrel-rolling.

" Damned tricky mercs." The leader swore, before separating himself from the three aircraft formation by diving as the Galm team was attacking them head on. However, his two wingmen had less luck and were gunned down as they attempted to do the same maneuver.

He was trying to arrive in Galm team's six hours with this looping, but he did not saw the small X-29A almost rolling on itself in a head-to-tail maneuver, and as he had locked his QAAMs on the F-15C, and as the bay was opening to fire, he was locked by Galm 1. Two missiles coming from his one hour ruined his reactors. His aircraft plummeted and he barely escaped death by bailing out at the last second.

Claw squadron dealt even quicker with the Nighthawks, as they had numeric advantage. For once they had the only strength Osea possessed on their side. Four Mirages came head-on on the F-117As, while two were circumventing them. The well trained Belkan pilots managed to avoid some fire and fired back, resulting in one Mirage pilot having to bail out after the two squadron crossed each other's path. However, this came at a high cost: two F-117As were shot down in this pass, before the five remaining Osean crafts got on their six hours and reduced them to smithereens with overwhelming firepower. No chute was sighted from the disintegrated stealth attackers.

 **Outskirt of Directus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 17:15, Weather: high cumulus.**

All bells were rung at full force, while happy Osean pilots and Ustian mercs were flying over the cheering crowd. All Belkan forces had been overrun, with heavily wounded from the chemical attack being transferred to a nearby hospital, as nitric acid causes three- and fourth-degree burns. They thought the battle was over. But it was not the mind of two Belkan pilots, the twin cormorants. Flying Su-37 Terminators with a livery comprised of a three-tone green camo with grey radome and yellow stripes on their wings, they were both eager to engage and defeat those two mercs. Their blazon was a yellow cormorant with flight goggles, surrounded by grass, in a yellow and then white circle, with their squadron number being the 23rd TFS (Tactical Fighter Squadron) -aka the Gelb squad-. If they succeeded, and they thought they could only succeed, it would be a devastating blow for the allied morale. Climbing above the low altitude limit of the Ustian AWACS, they made themselves visible to the allied forces, going on at full throttle.

 **Directus, Ustio, 13/05/1995, 17:15, Weather: high cumulus.**

" Incoming long-range missiles. All units in the air, brace immediately." The AWACS transmitted, as the two Su-37 unleashed a volley of XLAAs on the Claw and Galm squadron.

For the fast and agile Galm team fighters, it wasn't that hard to evade. However, the Claw team weren't that lucky. All Mirages went down, and the ones that weren't due to the first volley falls when the Su-37s came at QAAM range.

"They're faster than anything we've come across." Eagle Eye commented the incredible speed of the two Sukhoi 37 Terminators, one of the best aircraft ever designed, outclassed only by new generation aircrafts like the Wesson-UFOs.

" It looks like we have to take those last two to end this, leader." Pixy guessed, as the two squadron were engaging each other head on, only to shot missile for trash.

" I'm on the leader." Iskanda claimed, as she managed to get on the six of Gelb 1 after the initial onslaught.

However, those Su-37s housed a very nasty surprise for both Ustian mercs. Iskanda was slowly approaching the highly mobile fighter, which was doing everything he could do to shake her off, but she was still holding tight. And finally, the lock she sought desperately came. But then she was locked too.

" Warning, inbound missile, missile." The AWACS operator exclaimed, as the Sukhoi fired a QAAMs which was redirected backward through a rear facing radar.

Iskanda banked right while diving, before executing a streak of quick turns. She managed to lose the missile, but her target was lost. And Pixy's fate wasn't better: as he pulled out a great barrel-roll to the left to evade some backward fired QAAMs, the Sukhoi pulled a Cobra, and manage to land hits on the Eagle's right wing and ailerons.

" You have holes in your right wing, Pixy!" Johnson sighted; a bit worried about the safety of their pilots right now, especially Pixy which suffered hit on both wings

" Just a scratch, Eagle Eye." Pixy nodded, now on the defensive, the Eagle and the Terminator circling in front of the cathedral, with the highly advanced Belkan fighter gaining ground quickly.

" I cannot fail now. I didn't plan to come back in a coffin." Iskanda thought, while analyzing her opponents to find an opening to exploit. And when she saw the flying buttress of the cathedral, she knew what to do.

" Pixy, kept circling, I have found a vector of approach." She said, while heading toward the tight space. The enemy leader was trailing her but was a bit reluctant to follow her. He tried to fire a QAAM through a space between two flying buttresses, but it didn't connect and exploded on the cathedral, destroying one stained glass window but not damaging the global structure.

" I see you coming, leader." Pixy nodded, remembering what she did the last time she said that line, but instead of circling tried to leave the engagement zone a bit.

Of course, Gelb 2 caught up with him in no time. But obviously Pixy wasn't trying to run, but to put the enemy fighter in harm's way. He pulled a Split-S, grazing the cathedral's parvis when climbing back. The Sukhoi went for a Herbert Manöver (J-turn), getting back in the six of Pixy and diving on the climbing Eagle like a bird of prey. While the two were climbing, Pixy set his bearing toward a point a bit above the left front of the cathedral, near the first flying buttress.

" Ich halte dir." (I got you) Gelb 2 announced proudly, as Galm 2 was now climbing right over the cathedral.

Yet Gelb 2 did not watch were the enemy leader was. It was his greatest mistake. Because as she went out of this improvised tunnel, she was right on his tail, as he was climbing toward Pixy. She fired, and her gun ripped apart the rear-facing radar. Still, the Belkan just passed right in front of her for a glimpse, having given her a very short window of opportunity. Her shot was almost pure luck.

" Gelb 2 to one, lost rück radar." He signaled, while the said leader was again trailing Iskanda.

"Denn du bist tot." Pixy announced, while pulling a vertical Himmelman and diving on the Terminator. Both aircraft fired their missiles immediately. Despite Pixy's craft being the furthest damaged, he evaded both his opponent's missiles, while one of his struck the left wing of the Belkan fighter. Gelb 2 had to level to maintain his craft' stability, but was now leaving the engagement, hoping his leader could cover him.

But he never had the time. Using his miraculously still untouched airbrake, Pixy managed to halt his fall quickly, and was the pursuer now. And if the rear-facing radar only take direct fire from the X-29A, the debris caused by the impact damaged his vectored nozzles. The F-15C was in his six in no time, and while he managed to evade a missile by pulling a Cobra, this put him in harm's way. He was stuck in mid-air as his vectored nozzles did not respond, and Pixy capitalized this opening by firing a final missile on the tail of the Sukhoi 37. The Belkan craft, which was ablaze and losing altitude almost hit him, but the Belkan merc managed to evade the wreckage in time.

"Gelb 2, eject, now!" Gelb leader shouted, while he was still fiercely jousting with Galm leader. He made sure he was keeping his distance, firing QAAMs each time Galm 1 was in gun range.

Like the Claw squadron, Gelb 2 managed to bail out safely, but the burst pushed him toward the cathedral. And his parachute went stuck in a gargoyle, setting him in the perfect place to see his leader's horrific demise.

Galm 1 pulled a great horizontal loop toward the cathedral front, while Gelb 1 enact an Himmelman toward his opponent. He knew that this kind of enemy was far too dangerous to be left alive, even if he had to take her down with him. Her, on the other side, had already planned how she would end him. She was going to terminate this Terminator.

The two aircraft flew for an aerial joust, head-on. Gelb 1 fired two missiles but a barrel-roll to the left was enough for Iskanda to fool them. She was just setting her static FAEBs to a shorter detonation delay.

" Stirb, verdammt Söldnerin!" Gelb 1 shouted, getting in gun range.

But again, she evaded his fire, through a partial barrel-roll to the right. Partial because she stopped the roll of her aircraft to make sure she would pass between his ailerons. But while barrel-rolling, she tossed three things: two static FAEBs, and one sassy one-liner:

" Hasta la vista."

" Was…" Gelb 1 began to speak before being obliterated. The two static FAEBs just exploded, and his aircraft was caught between the two shockwaves. The double detonation was so intense that nothing, not a single piece of metallic wreckage hit the ground when the clouds vanished.

And all of this, Gelb 2 saw it, his parachute still stuck on the gargoyle. He even felt the warmth and the strength of these static FAEBs.

" He won't come back." Pixy added, as he leveled his aircraft next to his leader. He was sure she was on the verge of getting in "mad-laugh-because-I-like-killing-people" mode. And indeed, she started laughing like when she recalled her past.

" That was a funny line, Pixy. Trying to become a humorist after this war, aren't you?" Koenig said, while the AWACS's radar was doing a final check on the area. When it showed nothing but their allies and an A-400M bringing their stuff from Valais, he authorized himself some relief.

When Iskanda landed on the airport five minutes later, she had stopped her mad laugh, but for all of them, this horrific -or magnificent for Iskanda- image of Gelb 1's demise was burned into their memory for ever, especially for his wingmen.

 **Directus International Airport, Ustio, 17:30, 13/05/1995, Weather: high cumulus.**

Their debriefing was quite a happy one, and not a quiet one. Even on their way to the airport control tower for this briefing they met a crowd of Ustians, congratulating them for giving their freedom back. And in the said room, they were numerous too : all the other pilots grounded had come to celebrate, among them Halo 5 with his leg still in a caster, some resistance members, including one in a lab coat -maybe the one with the "Brønsted" surname-, the commander of this SAM unit, now designed as "Der Abweichler", some Osean commandos, the members of Claw squadron -which miraculously survived their brief engagement with the Gelb squadron-, and obviously the Galm team.

" Belka's Ustio-branch headquarters has either fallen or joined us. The joint action of our citizens in the resistance, our men and our allies has liberated Directus." Koenig solemnly announced, with full confidence in his voice.

" This is a turning point in the war, a day to sight with a black stone." Johnson added, with a wide smile on his face. He was eager to meet his sister again to know what happened to her during the occupation.

Then some civilian in white coat entered, yet it wasn't a chemistry lab coat. But a one used in winemaking.

" The people of Directus wanted to thank all of you for your bravery. So, we bring some Zäckermann, a local sparkling wine. Perfect, I'd say, for celebrating an occasion such as this. And to remember this day, we give to each of you brave folks some vintage bottle of Chateau Beauloise 1993. It's a hard-to-find Cabernet. Perfect to remind this special date." The winemaker introduced the gift from Ustio to its liberators.

Some minute after, all were taking sips from this sparkling wine a bit sweeter than Champagne, while chatting about the future, the past, and enjoying the present. Pixy was asking to the resistance members if they knew some people who record the last stand of his former flight leader. The Brønsted guy was talking physics with Thesermeister and Osean commandos with the Halo Squadron. Johnson left quite early when he finally got his sister on the phone. And Koenig was introducing Hervin to Iskanda. The rogue Belkan was a bit taller than her, with white hairs and grey eyes.

" So, you're Herr Abweichler?"

" My real name is Friedrich von Hervin, miss Deadpool." He replied with repartee, having learned her nickname from some resistance members.

" Hervin is like me, an idealist who just wanted to protect his people. Maybe if there were a bit more idealist persons amongst the military there would be a bit less wars." Koenig added, wishing it could become true in the future, not wanting this continent to be a wasteland.

" And this von particle, you're a noble I guess?" Iskanda asked. For her, she found that his impeccable brushed hairs and the signet ring with two tower he was wearing on the left ring finger indicated some nobility.

" My parents were Margraven of the chateau Beauloise, Marquess if you prefer. Ruined by Osean traders." He agreed with Iskanda's analysis.

" I see."

" But I do not have an utter hate of all Oseans, a bit like Herr Kupchenko. The thing I hate is their system which strive for economic and political dominance because of their so-called liberalism. But we are not here to speak about politics, are we?" He stated his mind about their most powerful allies, outside Yuktobania.

" I agree, we shouldn't be talking about politics when we have a victory to celebrate." Koenig nodded, rising his glass to celebrate once more this victory.

" This day is something to celebrate, Prosit." Iskanda raised her glass too.

" Speaking of celebration, I think there will be something organized in the days ahead." Koenig said after emptying his glass.

" You mean, receiving some shiny tiny piece of metal? That would be new to me at least." Iskanda intervened, hoping to get something more than just money for this day.

This day was definitely a day that would be remembered. Almost all territories Belkan occupied were free now. The true war was beginning now. Yet does true victory exist in war?

 **Well, as some Osean journalist said (Brett Thompson), the true nature of the war is beginning now. But who will be the victim, the aggressor, the villain, the heroes? Do heroes even exist? (You have 4 hours, Student!) (Don't worry, just kidding the bac of philosophy is over by now). So obviously this battle is a bit harder than the original. But I recognize Gelb team is quite hard to destroy in ace… As usual, feel free to comment, subscribe, follow...**

 **2/08 (my birthday): some grammatical mistakes fixed.**

 **14/01/2020: some grammatical mistakes fixed (again).**


	11. Ustian Tourism

**Directus, Ustio, 14/05/1995, 9:00, Weather: Clear with high stratus.**

All pilots, mercs, resistance fighters and soldiers had been convened to the town hall. In other times they would have used other governmental buildings, such as ministry sieges, but as many were requisitioned, used by the resistance fighters or as place of last stand by fanaticized Belkan soldiers, only the town hall was available right now, the day following the victory. And among them were all the personnel of the sixth Unit.

The building in front of which they were waiting for their shiny tiny piece of metal was quite an old one. It was a medium-sized one, created by the merging of two house of medieval bourgeois, resulting in a building with two sloped roofs of slate. It was ornamented with a nice balcony on all its width, with the latter having ornamented pillars linked by some vaulted arches featuring leaves sculpted in white limestone. Cutting the balcony in its middle, a massive marble staircase was today covered by a red tapestry. And falling from each parts of the balcony there was an Ustian flag, composed of a black triangle with its base on the left side and its peak on the right side, with white above it on the right side and red below the black triangle.

In the end they did not wait that long. Only five minutes upon arrival their commander and some high-ranking allied forces officers walk out of the building and went on the balconies on each side. Koenig was amongst them in a fresh and ironed uniform, yet still of greyish green. Osean official wore some greyish blue while Sapins wore greyish ochre yellow and Yukte were just in grey with a red tie. Some soldiers were carrying some cases behind them.

Speakers had been set on some pillars of iron, way above the crowd. Below each they strapped small flags of each country, with the red one of Yuktobania, the blue and white with six stars of Osea, the one of Ustio and the Sapin one, comprised of one band of white and two band of blue separated by golden lines, with some blazons and a crown in the white. Koenig was the first to deliver his speech, being the de-facto leader of the Ustian army for now, the majority of Ustian official having been arrested and sent to Belka in the hope that it would reduce the likelihood of resistance.

" Soldiers, pilots, resistance fighters. Today, we celebrate our liberation. Our liberation by the hands of our sovereign people and our allies at our side."

The crowd cheered, especially the very numerous Ustians. They would be not considered as victims or defeated, but as victors.

" We have seen many people fall in this war: friends, fellow citizens, unknowns who died as free men, fighting for their freedom. And now that we have won back our freedom, we will keep fighting for the freedom of all peoples involved into this conflict."

New cheering of the crowd. Now Koenig was a bit reluctant to say the last part of his speech. He knew it would be considered as controversies.

" We would gain nothing by going into Belka with only the Idea of destruction. Belkans are men too. Yesterday some Belkans showed us that they still had some bravery to fight for the liberation of their Homeland." He kept saying his speech while looking a bit at Hervin, who was a bit uneasy being surrounded by Oseans and Yukte officers who were not very friendly toward him for obvious reasons.

" If we had to cross the Belkan border and thus the Glatisant, we will not go as conquerors. We will go there as liberators and I hope that once this war will end, a new era of peace and prosperity will emerge of this chaos." Koenig finished explaining his mind on what he was fighting for: to liberate his fellow citizens from this far-right Rald Partei, who aimed to restore stability and pride but would only destroy Belka if they stayed in power.

This time the cheering was less intense, but still numerous. Obviously, this point of view wasn't shared by the Osean officers nor the Yuktes. They had cut downs, but their industrial might allowed them to withstand them. But not for Ustio or Sapins, who suffered massive losses during the invasion. Thus, the latter wished some idealists and free thinkers like Hervin could help them end this war without them having to scorch the Belkan territory all the way from the Glatislant super fortress to the walls of Dinsmark. Yet war is never this straightforward.

Therefore, Osean and Yukte speech were way more passionate than Koenig's, calling all belligerents to take arms and fire on everything that would be standing between them and the Belkan leaders. During all this time Hervin was more and more uneasy, having the feeling to be a traitor even if he just did what was morally right for him. Yet all those speeches filled with hatred and anger were now making him wonder if the allied forces would respect human's right when they would cross the border. Until where would they go so far in what their politician were displaying to their credulous people as some holy crusade against Belka painted as some dark forces of evil? Hervin could not have certainties today. But he knew history. And in history those glorified holy crusade were more than often filled with unholy facts.

" Now the medal ceremony will begin with the Ustian Air Force, our liberators of the sky." Koenig said, after all speeches ended.

" Foulke, Larry, receive this medal as a mark of eternal recognition from the Ustian people." Koenig solemnly said, while pinning the medal on the greyish green uniform of the merc.

Then it was Iskanda's turn. It was the first time she was receiving shiny tiny pieces of metal. And to be honest it was a nice one. The band of tissue pinned to her flight suit was a horizontal depiction of Ustio's flag. Yet the medal was very Belkan-like, as it was a greyish, maybe silver painted or silver plated Belkan cross. In the middle of it there was what was now the symbol of Ustian victory: a bell. She heard them ringing all night, even the twelve strokes of midnight. In other times she would have found it annoying, but now she was quite pleased to hear them.

After the Galm team, the Komyeta and Halo Squadron received their medals. Koenig made sure he called the twelfth and fourteenth by their TAC name. Following them were the very lucky members of Claw squadron who survived the engagement against Gelb, then rows and rows of Ustian resistance fighters, with Herr "Børnsted" amongst them. And finally, it was the time for the Abweichler Soldaten to be rewarded. For Hervin especially it was a very solemn moment. He only looked at Koenig's eyes when walking toward him, unable to look at the Osean and Yukte glare full of hatred toward Belkans.

He left as soon as the medal was pinned on his Belkan uniform. In the street he later met Iskanda as the crowd was pulling them toward the Sainte Victoire cathedral. She noticed his embarrassment, as he was nervously touching his signet ring.

" I guess the Osean speech weren't easy for Belkan ears?" She asked, a bit inelegantly.

" It was indeed. Damn those Oseans. The falsified economic operation of Mt Schirm almost allowed the Rald Partei to take power, and it was their doing." He spat venom on his now de-facto allies.

Then he explained the situation: these mines were built with Belkan money but following Osean hypothetical assumptions of raw stuff in the area. And when Belkan geologist found nothing, the Osean who set all of this deal vanished, leaving the Belkans with only massive debts and unused overpriced crawlers.

" There was some dispute between me and this arrogant weakling that this Weeker admiral is." She added to the talk, pronouncing Weeker as "weaker".

" I heard of it after the allied forces victory in Futuro canal. It's awful how they treated you afterwards." The former Belkan major responded, before saying with a slightly happier voice, while putting a comforting hand on Iskanda's shoulder: " But we shouldn't have so many bad thoughts in this moment of celebration. Besides I know some nice shortcuts to Sainte Victoire, if you want to avoid the crowd."

" Well show me the way then, Hervin." She accepted with a somewhat rejoiced face, and the two turned between some old medieval building, going down some old stairs.

But they were not the only ones speaking of dispute between the Sapino-Ustian point of view and the Oseano-Yukte ones.

" Koenig, your speech was good, but a bit biased toward your own people." An Osean Major said with great disdain.

" Threatening my mens, spreading hatred throughout the entire continent. This isn't how you will get their loyalty, Major Orson." Koenig retorted, recalling what he thought was morally wrong in this Osean propaganda speech. Because if his was of hope and rewards, Oseans and Yuktes were pure propaganda and hatred.

" Us Oseans want results over loyalty and pride." Orson snapped back, and the two officers with opposed minds kept their unfriendly bickering all the way to Sainte Victoire.

 **Parvis of Sainte Victoire's cathedral, Directus, Ustio, 14/05/1995, 11:30, Weather: high stratus.**

Despite all her comrades entering in the cathedral, Iskanda preferred to stay outside. She was always ill eased when in religious building when ceremonies were happening. Instead she decided to go for a walk around it, while listening a bit the sounds of bells, organ and songs which seemed to have victorious oriented meaning, such as "Song of Freedom", or others celebrating victory of good over evil.

Her assumptions of the cathedral's shape she had from up there were quite similar to what she was seeing right now. Still, from here she could see the few colors that subsisted on some outside sculptures, the thine divide between the well assembled blocks of limestones, or from some angles, the colored lights effects induced by the stained glasses. It was gothic art at his finest, with the high double vaulted arches and high windows. The more beautiful light effects were the ones produced by the highly colored rose windows, with Sainte Victoire having one between the two massive bell towers, and one on each ends of its transept.

And now, finally, the organ and bells were playing the after song. Yet this time it wasn't a calm music just sending people to the civilian life. It sounded like trumpets of war, and the overall music as it had been taken from some war movies, at a point between two important battles.

Now the crowd of soldiers and civilians was emptying the massive building. Iskanda quickly reached out her squad mates, as they were leaving the flow of people on Sainte Victoire parvis.

" You should have entered, Iskanda. I mean, even if you aren't a believer this cathedral is a marvel of architecture." Viviane said, not fully understanding the Erusean's reason for not following them to this ecumenical ceremony.

" And it sounded very well. Nice mechanical resonance." Valentin judged from his physical point of view.

" Fine, I will have a look of the inside." Iskanda agreed with a bit of reluctance.

 **Sainte Victoire cathedral, Directus, Ustio, 14/05/1995, 11:45.**

She had passed the monumental ten centimeters thick oaken doors. Some pieces of metal were embedded into the wooden structure, resulting from the SPKs and SAMs destruction on its parvis. These new pieces of metal were adding themselves to the old nails from the medieval era that were holding some leaf-looking metallic ornaments. The other print of war was one missing stained glass. But today it wasn't that bothering, she guessed, as it was an easy and sunny day, far different from the cold and snowy day of Valais Air Base.

She admired the gigantic cylindrical three-story chandeliers, each holding dozens of harmonically set light bulb, as a way to replace the candles of before the electric age. But what caught her attention the most was the vast stained glasses below the rose glass in the southern transept. There were six high stained glasses, each separated in four vertically. And in the rose glass above those twenty-four glasses there was a winged female figure: a glorified Sainte Victoire, holding a spear with a laurel blade and some double cross guard near the blade, with the first guard longer than the lowest one. Furthermore, a long white triangular flag was hung on the two parts of the guard. "Primo Victoria" was written in black gothic letters on it.

Yet, a single person entering in the cathedral after everyone exited it caught a bit the attention of some priest. Thus, a man in white frieze skirt approached her silently.

" Interested in the story of our patron saint, my sister?" The priest asked her with a peaceful voice.

" I do. She was a great warrior after all. But I'd rather you just said miss to call me." She confirmed her interest toward this historical figure. But another print of her past was that she didn't like the way clerics called laics.

" It is fine, miss Rayien. May I begin her history?" He just read her name on her shoulder plate.

She answered by a bow of her head.

" Well, begin the story."

" The person now known as Sainte Victoire is born in 1565, in Farbanti. She was from a wealthy family of local drapers and met her husband the future Kaspar VI as he was with his parents, which were buying drapes for his sister's wedding." The priest described the picture on the top left, where two adult and one girl were seen buying drapes, while two younglings were looking at each other's, our future Kaspar VI and Sainte Victoire.

" Her husband become Margrave of Directus at 20 when his parents died by poison. He was a good Lord, and historians have judged him as a fair ruler. But he didn't outlive his parents for long." He kept describing the glass, one of dead and one of golden field of corn.

" Historians are still dithering on which poison killed him, as they found multiples in his remains, thus they cannot know precisely which rival was seeking to kill him. For once she mourned him. But not for long. People and especially the said rivals began to think that the territory of Directus was weak as it was led by a lone widow."

" She then began to arm massively her subjects, all who could wield weapons were given. But even she knew she couldn't resist her rivals' armies in Directus where there was no efficient defensive structure. Directus was an open commercial city after all."

" I understand how it is simple to take it or to take it back now." Iskanda added, as the priest described a glass with a crowd of fleeing armed people.

" There weren't many places to go. Valaisian Alps were too cold to survive in winter. So, she headed Northwest. Some of her older councilman gave her the way toward the fortress currently known as Glatisant on Mt Ivrea, having heard stories of it. The place was indeed an old medieval fortified city that spread on kilometers. In her time, it was only a semi-destroyed city populated by smugglers, thieves, exiled of the Northern territories. But she wasn't alone to go either. In a few weeks they pacified the area, and began to modernize the fortress, giving Glatisant its current shape, with the rampart to defend, the garden to produce their means of subsistence, a polygonal castle on the South-East, a central strengthened dungeon and two other towers in the North-East, slightly less armored than the central one, but easy to defend while hard to take." The priest described the fortress she was very likely to attack in the incoming weeks or even days. And even if it was modernized in the sixteenth century and weapon had become much more powerful since then, this fortress seemed to be ready to receive them with very warm Belkan hospitality.

" But how did they find the stone or the raw metals in this area?" Iskanda asked, not understanding how such a massive Fortress could be self-sustained.

" There were old stone quarries and iron mines bored through the mountains. Now they must surely have been turned into bunkers and such facilities." The priest answered, with a bit of sadness when he realized these structures would surely fell some days later to the very person he was talking right now.

" But back to the story. They began raiding territories of the Schayne plains. Yet they weren't the only ones doing it. The "Skin Hers" as they were named because they usually skin their victims alive were already doing such raids. Using mobile cavalry Ste Victoire didn't possess at that moment, they dealt much more trouble to the counts leading those territories. Yet for an unknown reason one count decided to ally with the most fearsome Skin Her leader, nicknamed Herr Geier (vulture). This man was supposed to lead a third of his Skin Hers as a scouting cavalry while the main forces would stay behind, waiting to attack the weaker forces of their opponents."

One stained glass was displaying the Man in his atrocious activities, with a shield and banner decorated by a double-headed vulture.

Then the priest went through a description of a quite colorful glasses, bearing a great number of flames and burning men and horses:

"This was named by historians as the battle of burning plains. Mislead by ruses of the future Ste Victoire, they thought she had set her camp in front of some great lake in the Schayne plains, a strategic mistake for any commander. Yet they took foxfire for campfire. The Skin Hers who thought they weren't spotted stop at the lake while the main forces were thinking they were charging through their opponents' camp. Yet the only thing they find were some clocks linked to barrels of black powder and others flammable stuff. Historians are still wondering how they manage to detonate this with an almost perfect accuracy, but as this place was swamp filled with many pockets of methane it didn't need that much to burn."

" I definitely like her strategy." Iskanda fully approved this smart yet very destructive approach. After all, exploding black powder in an area filled with methane should have produced similar results than a FAEB. Of course, with a bit of incertitude but still.

" Only a tiny part of the Skin Hers, those who were the closest to the lake survived and managed to swim to the other side were Ste Victoire forces were firmly entrenched. Most of them surrendered. Even Herr Geier was defeated by Victoire herself according to writings of this era, but it wasn't very hard to defeat a man who was quite tired after swimming half a mile in. At this moment the rearguard of the soldier who were supposed to simply marched into a camp said that hell was opening itself, or that the flame of holy spirit was burning them for their sins. The truth is that they just outsmart."

" And what did she do with mister Geier?"

" To his greater surprise she spared his life. He was waiting for death, but it didn't come. She explained to him that death had a meaning. His at this moment would have had none. But after what he saw in this battle, seeing soldiers being burned and obliterated, he might have realized the horror he submitted people to."

The next stain glasses were indeed depicting the man kneeling with his shield broken and his soul being submitted to fire.

" After his defeat, he became one of his most trusted lieutenants, uniting a great number of former Skin Hers as a mercenary army, walking by the side of Ste Victoire. Many other time she obtained victory through unchivalrous tactics, but in a few months she occupied all territory from the Glatislant to the Schirm mountains, which with the Waldreich mountains at the East nearly cut Belka in half, even if Schirm ones are mostly low mountain plateau while Waldreich are way higher."

He kept describing other victories, taking of cities through disguise and ruse. Despite having to fight side by side with some of their former tormentors, the people she recruited through her victories quickly reached the dozens of thousands. By this point her mother country was now openly helping them through the port cities of North Belka they took, near Anfang for example. However, the retaking of Directus had unforeseen consequences.

" The roof of Directus cathedral burned that day. But by luck it was heavily raining that day, and thus the worst was avoided. This is why the stained glasses are somewhat recent. At this point in history nearly ten years had passed since her husband's death. She could have chosen to rule the united Belka, which now would include Belka and its former oriental part, the great Lakes, a bit of the North of Sapin, for all her life but surprisingly ended her reign at fifty."

" And what did the Skin Hers she recruited become?" Iskanda was curious to know how she dealt with them once the conflict ended.

" Well, surprisingly many become farmers. For example, Chateau Geier is now only a great winemaker, not as good as a Chateau Beauloise but a fine wine." The priest answered to her astonishment.

The next stain glass was of what seemed to be some chamber of parliament, with below each member his territory's blazon. It was the beginning of the confederation of Belkan counties. One of the first unperfect try for modern democracy.

" She created this confederation before retiring in the convent where Herr von Hervin was yesterday."

" I guess that if this whole continent is plunged into chaos right now that this confederation didn't last until now." Iskanda stated the obvious of the confederation's demise.

" You are right, Söldnerin. The dishonored knights and other rivals she chased out of her newly established boundaries slowly united to face her or the confederation of Belkan counties. Her enemies slowly became the Osean federation, while the principality of Belka which succeeded to the confederation faced centuries of economic struggle due to its neighbors. This has already led to numerous wars, already two in this century and many others before. In the end Sainte Victoire's history explains a bit why there's such hatred between Osean and Belkans."

" Even if war is not as simple as in her era. Thanks for the history lesson." Iskanda was grateful toward the cleric for explaining his patron saint history.

" I know you weren't there in the ceremony, and it doesn't matter to me if you aren't a believer. Still, sometimes I hope the messages of peace and kindness the ones who were before us could guide a bit this world toward harmony."

" I won't say I would like to be workless. Yet I agree I would like one day to be able to retire like Sainte Victoire did in her time." She agreed with the partially biased and idealistic mind of the cleric, but everyone could be a bit idealistic, even with mind filled of thoughts of fratricide.

" And one final thing before you leave, don't worry about the stained glasses your fight has destroyed. Maybe its replacement will evoke this second liberation of Directus. Go in peace, Söldnerin."

" That's a bit absurd for my point of view but thanks again." She finally let the priest to his religious thoughts and exited the building to retrieve her wing mates outside, as they had planned to make some tour of the city with them. Yet being in a church reminded her of a time where she was indeed at peace. But it was long gone now.

 **Military barracks of Directus, Directus, Ustio, 15/05/1995, 13:00.**

Yesterday had been a perfect day. And the morning too. Meeting Viviane and Morgana's husband, respectively a baker and a clockmaker, were a good pause in the middle of the Belkan War. But the message of peace and kindness she took from the priest was quickly forgotten after one event.

None of them had seen the event coming. It came from just some misbehavior, and it had consequences they did not imagine as it was taking place. Consequences that would change many things at short and long term.

But back to the event itself, it all began after some officers' meal. Yet in all of these almost daily festivities there might have been a bit too much of Zäckermann to drink. And more than often drunken men or women had the tendency to lose control of themselves.

During this meal the Erusean merc received some inappropriate comments on her body or simply lack of femininity from some Oseans who forget to restrain themselves in those time of victory. Pixy managed to restrain her from rushing straight forward, but even while doing so he saw her with her right arm clenched under her shirt, around her jade blade maybe. Being a bit older than her, he was for a time successful in persuading her to let go those comments. But when at some point in the end of the meal he was distracted by some pictures of his former leader before her demise he recently managed to get, everything happened.

Iskanda had seen for some seconds the same Osean officer who make sassy comment toward her bothering a bit too much a waitress of their barracks, trying to play the overly loudly seducer, as they made their way to their room. Pixy went to his deceased girlfriend final stand registration, while Iskanda decided on a hunch to stay a bit behind, not liking what she was seeing -in other words ready to intervene to help this girl-. The Ustian waitress wasn't going to receive any help from other Oseans around the place either. And as the Osean try to grab the arm of the Ustian women after she repeated him to leave twice, and threaten to report this incident, Iskanda's blood only made one turn.

She grabbed the other arm of the Osean, helping the Ustian to push him aside. And all of this could have ended here. But no. The Osean raised a hand to strike at Iskanda, yet he never had the time to. Iskanda was quicker to draw her blade after avoiding a clumsy strike from this slightly drunk Osean. And her strike was successful, slashing at the open palm of the Osean, with the blade slightly embedded between some bones for a glimpse before she pulled it out. Then she did a strong armlock to the Osean before pinning him to a nearby wall, cursing at the Osean who was now feeling a bit unlucky to have been take down so easily. Yet it took all the patience of Pixy and some resistance fighters, which had been transferred in their barracks as MPs to separate the two of them.

And obviously when Koenig was interrupted in the middle of some meeting to plan the attack on the Glatislant for this reason, he wasn't really happy to say the least, and this was the understatement of the year. Of course, Iskanda had acted in self-defense, but Ustian law was quite specific about what was or wasn't self-defense acts.

" Admiral, you really need to watch your gun-for-hire!" The injured Osean pilot said. He was of the Foxfire squadron according to his shoulder insignia.

" According to the witnesses and the person you try to molest, she was only defending herself when you try to strike at her." Koenig harshly replied. What he feared happened: some of those Osean soldiers thinking they could walk like in conquered territory had cross the line. Hopefully for once the odd were with him.

" Lieutenant Feltson, I can do nothing but agree on the Ustian point of view here." The major Orson said, being forced to recognize that the Foxfire squadron member wasn't telling the truth when he tried to turn this incident in a murder attempt.

" Foxfire 3, if I truly wanted to kill you, I would have sliced a bit deeper so I could have kept your carpal bones to play jacks." An especially angry Erusean mercenary retorted, hoping to scare a bit the Osean.

" What? Your Sixth Unit pilots are just a bunch of f.." The wounded began to complain but his Osean superior made him shut up.

" This confrontation was useless, admiral Koenig. I will take this man and he will be punished for his fault. Maybe this way I will gain a bit of loyalty from our new Victoire of yesterday." The Osean cut the talks shorts while trying to flatter Iskanda by giving her this Erusean sounding name.

" I will make sure these kinds of incident will not happen again, Major Perrault." Koenig ended the brief meeting, thinking to which solution he could apply to solve this dilemma. Iskanda wasn't fit to live in barracks amongst Oseans who disrespected her due to the prior events of canal Futuro.

" You cannot win right now against the winner of yesterday and Directus' liberator, Foxfire 3. Not now." Perrault said to his subordinate as both of them had left the meeting room in the Airport of Directus, with this time Osean MPs escorting the pilot instead of Ustian ones.

" Now we need to find a new flat for you until next mission." Koenig added, as the two Osean were out of the room. He truly hoped no other incidents would be sighted. It was something you could be expecting from an occupying enemy force, but not an allied one.

" Sir, I have maybe a solution. My sister has quite a big house here in Directus, and thus I think she could maybe house the Galm team for a few days." Johnson intervened, now back in touch with his relative.

" Why not? It will only be the matter of a few days indeed." Koenig seemed to agree with this a bit out-of-the-box solution. But unorthodox people causing unorthodox problems required unorthodox solutions.

" I guess I can live with some civilians until we attack Glatislant too." Larry agreed to follow his flight leader. He could follow her through hell and heaven in the sky, so living with some civilians would be fine.

" Then it's good. I will call her, and we will all meet to go join her around 17:00, will it be right to get your stuff you need to move girls and guys?" Johnson set the schedule for the oncoming hours, to which Iskanda and Pixy agreed mutually with a little bow of their heads.

 **Outskirts of Directus, Ustio, 15/05/1995, 17:00, Weather: clear.**

Magdalena's house was quite a big one to the standards of both mercenaries who for most of the time had only their hangar or their small prefabricated flat to sleep in. At least it was what Iskanda was thinking when she saw the house from the jeep Philip Johnson used to drive them. From the outside it was a simple two-stage house with a roof in a sitting dog form. Just to avoid anything, Johnson introduced a bit his older sister before ringing the bell.

" She's quite nice to me, and usually welcome me with open arms the few times I came here. I think you'll have the same treatment."

" Good luck and Godspeed, then." Iskanda replied, as her AWACS operator was ringing the bell, wishing him luck when it was most of the time the other way around.

Five minute later, a young brown-haired woman wearing a blue skirt and light-yellow blouse opened the door, before rushing toward her uncle and pulling him into a soft embrace, calling their AWACS operator "Phil". An older voice came from the open door, from which was coming a nice smell of cooking.

" Lana, who is it?"

" Uncle is here, Mutti." The young lady replied, pulling out the latter from her embrace.

" Well, I've almost finished the baking. Make then come errein (inside)." The older female voice said, while some noise linked to her activity could be heard.

The two mercenaries and their operator entered the house, preceded by the young Ustian. Of course, the smell of cooking was stronger inside, and now they were trying what was expecting them, as the young lady make them seat on a leather couch.

" I guess Axe and Hammer pay well their engineers, judging by the quality of the furniture." Iskanda said, as she sat comfortably on it.

" I don't know if mercs gain more." The interested walked into the room, wearing a slightly flour-covered coat over a thin blouse and a pair of grey jeans. Following their blond-haired hostess, another brown-haired young lady wearing black pants and a green hoodie came in the room too. " But there's maybe a bit more job security. Magdalena Johnson, nice to meet you folks. And this young lady behind me is my elder daughter Eva."

" Nice to meet the big sister of our AWACS operator." The two mercs said while standing up to shake the hand Magdalena was offering them.

" The honor is on me. If you folks didn't save my brother's guts at Valais I... I cannot think what would have happened." Magdalena stammered a bit as she was imagining herself explaining the death of his brother to her daughters.

" We don't have to imagine what is not. Only to enjoy what is now." Pixy replied with a peaceful voice to the Ustian woman.

" Ja Herr solo Wing ist recht. Less mourning, and a bit more drinking." Eva said, only to be reprobated by her mother, which with her rectangular glasses had quite a stern face.

" It's not because you just hit eighteen last month that you need to have your first hangover."

In the following minutes, they talk about their youth a bit, the youth of her daughters and their progress in this new Ustian scholar system. It was a bit closer to the Erusean lycées, as consequences from the strong Erusean influence in this part of Belka after Sainte Victoire era. Both had a bit of mixed and good grades as they were only entering this system since December 1994.

Of course, the daughter could only drink Radler as the pilots celebrated once more Directus' liberation, when the grown-ups could drink beer with a bit more of alcohol. But it was good for all them to celebrate victory once more when some people thought they should be locked away for their misbehavior. The mind of Magdalena on this point of view was quite franc:

" It could have happened or not. This kind of incident usually happened when you have a big army of young men persuaded that they have some moral high ground on their foes which they hadn't. I won't say I would want Belkans to come back obviously but being liberated is not trading a master for another."

" This is going way too much philosophical for me." Iskanda commented, not a great liker of great flight of philosophy.

" I guess Iskanda only did what she thought was right. But in such a prolonged conflict, concept of good and bad is not always a key factor. Yet we all need to act, as apathy mean death if no one act." Pixy said while elegantly taking a sip of wine, a fine Muscat Magdalena served with the main course.

" I will try. Sometimes we think we are doing the right thing. And then we realize our acts have consequences we would have never imagined." Iskanda tried to get philosophical for a bit, as all were going.

" My, my, that was some great quote. I should write it down for the test of philosophy next week." Eva said joyfully.

" If you need to learn these abstract concepts, stick with Herr Denker at my right." Iskanda pointed out Pixy skills in this field.

The meal was finished by a Sachertorte. As Magdalena had to bake it, this was the reason why she was slightly flour-covered, and why the kitchen was now filled with the smell of chocolate. And it was slowly dissipating throughout the house. Even if to Iskanda's nose the metallic smell of blood was a bit more exciting than this smell of baking, it wasn't uneasy.

 **Magdalena's house, Directus, Ustio, 16/05/1995, 10:00, Weather: high stratus.**

For the two mercenaries it has been a very different night to what they were used to. Sleeping on real mattress, without the fear of being bombed during the night, being assaulted by Belkan Kommandos, or being awaken just by a very painful to hear alarm. Sometimes civil life clearly had its advantage.

But sometimes it was the civilian who had their life slightly changed by the mercenaries they were currently housing. This is why Magdalena had to go knock on the entrance door of the main bathroom, finding that this Pixy guy was taking too much time - even more than her elder daughter when the latter had hair who were going below her shoulder line-.

" Pixy, why are you taking such time for one shower? Are there water shortage at Valais?"

" Well, no. But Iskanda has locked the switch on cold water there. Sorry if I didn't see the time pass." The Belkan merc had to acknowledge. Indeed, Iskanda only took cold showers. He could recognize it was good to help waking up, but when the external temperature was always negative, it was quite hard to bear it for nearly two months.

" So now I know who has taken her shower this morning and let on cold water when I took mine. See you in five minutes, some friends in the resistance have reported to me that they were trying to get all the video footage from Directus' fall together at the Technical Museum." Magdalena used this argument to have Pixy finishing his shower quicker, as the latter said yesterday evenings that he was looking forward to finding such stuff.

And this argument revealed to be quite efficient, as Pixy was ready four minutes later. The schedule for the day was already set up: Iskanda would be guided by the two young Ustiano-Belkan ladies, while Pixy would go with Madgalena at the Museum. Then they would choose some restaurant in the vicinity of it and enjoy the rest of the day before they had to go back at Valais at 18:00. Iskanda was left with a mysterious journey with those two teenagers, but she had mentioned at the end of the meal that she was a bit with a loose wardrobe, due to her forced escape of Farbanti two month prior.

 **Technical Museum of Directus, Directus, Ustio, 16/05/1995, 11:30.**

Madgalena had pulled Pixy out of the Museum so he could cool himself at a nearby Kaffeehaus. Why he needed to be a bit cooled was coming from the footage he saw inside the Museum. Obviously, they found the last stand of his deceased leader, as she allowed him to leave, with him having a wing ripped off by a SAAM launched from a Su-47. This squadron of Su-47 had a camo which like some snakeskin, precisely an Adder. This vicious snake was the symbol of the Grabacr squadron after all. And what Pixy said when he realized that wasn't something cool to be honest. No, it was filled with hatred.

" Ashley, du bewusstlos Mörder (reckless Murder)! We fought side by side in Wieldwakia. I could have spared you a painful death. Aber der Adler wird den Adder bald zerstören, vertöten und vernichten (but the eagle will soon destroy, kill and annihilate the adder)!" Pixy shouted at the footage he just saw, emphasizing the last three destructive words. He was not recognizing himself in this sudden burst of anger, which was something that Iskanda was more likely to do if she found one of her relatives in Belka for example. She would scorch all of its territory without a single doubt with the fire of her hatred.

" Damned, you can be scary when you want, mister Foulke." Magdalena said, as they were taking a mug of some cooling red tea.

" I don't know why I went so passionate, Mrs. Johnson. Guess I just understand what the lust of vengeance that burn in my current leader's heart is." Pixy tried to explain his act rationally. But passion and logic were two parallel line that never meet.

" You know, since I divorced, I prefer just Magdalena, or Maggie for my friends." Magdalena responded, moving to another subject than Pixy's sudden hatred for one of his former brothers in arms.

" So, I can consider myself as a friend of a great and brave mother now. Mines usually called me Larry or Pixy." The interested added, suppressing the formalities between them.

" Well, I know you cannot talk about next missions, but as a soldier, do you think that this war's gonna end?" Maggie changed another time the subject. Still, she wanted not to go full political with this one.

" Honestly I don't know for sure. Just one RTLS was enough to almost fail the landing operation over Solis Ortus. Or just one hypersonic missile in the Futuro canal when we took it." Larry tried his best to express the likelihood of a prolonged conflict, that would cost many lives in both sides, and could even saw the use of WMDs or nukes to end it.

" I see. This area has always known war anyways: in the middle age, the Renaissance, before and after Sainte Victoire's era, and now it will make three times in only one century, and only counting the major conflicts." The engineer she was recalled, having obtained her Abitur with a major in science and history -which was only an everlasting list of conflict in the area-.

" I guess it's human nature. Where man goes, war follows they said." Pixy went a bit philosophical, but right now it was more fortune cookies philosophy than anything, even if there were no fortune cookies with their red teas.

" Maybe it could change if peoples have enough will, don't you think?" Maggie asked, hoping that this merc was open-minded enough.

" It would need politician who could sit down and really discuss the problems of our world and decide what the best for all. Like what they would do for that damned sword of Damocles over our head that the Ulysses fragments are. But it would need men without corrupted minds which could watch over those politicians, and it will never happen if Osea win this war, and they will win it anyway." Pixy again went full political, spitting venoms on this country of corrupt traders.

" Yeah, but who could make them act, or who could make Osea change?" The Belkan Lady wondered, letting an unknown question in the air.

" We would need someone wise. Someone with a good tactical set of minds. Someone who could trust people and be entrusted with the power the people would give him without being corrupted by it." Pixy tried to set up a final answer, even if it was a pretty vagueness one.

" Great response master Yoda." Maggie laughed a bit after this final answer of Pixy, and then they spent the time speaking about aeronautics, with Maggie presenting the next upgrade the Eagle family would receive, derived from the F-15C, F-15E and most of all the research aircraft F15S/MTD, which come into action in the Belkan air force for its top aces, while Pixy was commenting them from a pilot point of view. Of course, there were other projects running, such as inclusion of stealth composites in the cell of the plane, of more advanced weapons, like weapon bays, or even energy-based weapons. But right now, the latter were way too heavy, and would be limited to heavy bomber, railway based or ship-based platforms, such as the RTLSs of Belka or the Osean Death Star squadron.

They would meet Iskanda and Maggie's daughters a few minutes later, with the Erusean one being wearing something vastly opposite to what military pilot would wear but was definitely getting well with her. She was wearing a dark red, nearly bloody three-fourth leather vest, with a black linen blouse underneath, a pair of dark blue leather pants, and military boots in a black matter.

" Did you go for the biker look only?" Pixy joked a bit about his leader new swuit.

" Just one thing, Iskanda. Tell me that you didn't go to the second under-floor of that leather clothes store?" Maggie asked, arching an eyebrow, a bit worried due to what this level was housing for her two young daughters, even if they were now late teenagers.

" Why, what could it contain that could be disturbing and leather-made?" Iskanda retorted to her interlocutress with a bit of cunningness.

" Yes, what does it contain, Mutti?" Eva asked with the same cunningness, as Iskanda was beginning to understand and laughing about it.

" Oh, nothing… Really nothing that matters so much." Maggie stammered, being a bit reluctant to explain what those specific leather clothes were.

This slightly awkward situation was finished by Iskanda too, displaying another bag of clothes behind her back. And of course, the bag was from a tailor company that was for men only. Being used to wearing only male clothes, she had lost the habit to wear skirts or dresses. It was the same thing for all her clothes, even shoes, or underwear. She recalled how disturbed the vendor was when she clearly explained to him that no, she wasn't buying clothes for her husband, boyfriend, friend, brother or any linked men, but for herself. Of course, he didn't show any sexism, but all people in the shop were staring as this strange androgyne which was using mens dressing room in this precise shop for men only. The recalling of this story caused Pixy to facepalm himself, while Maggie was wondering if male underwear were more comfortable to wear than female ones. At some point she could maybe agree they could, for people wearing anti-g suit regularly.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 16/07/1995, 19:00, Weather: low fog, risks of freezing.**

And now all were arriving back to base. Francis would not participate in the next operation, he knew it due to its caster, but he wanted to follow his brother anyway. Philip promised him he could follow them onboard the AWACS. Some soldiers in the logistics surely found the new stuff of Iskanda to be unusual and asked if there were bikers in the air when flying close to their escort fighters, causing some laugh to emerge over those iced mountains.

" I'm not a biker. It's just that I love that stuff. Find it suiting me. By the way, I do have a Motoraddführerschein." The concerned one responded.

" A what?" Claw 3 asked, his knowledge of Belkan being limited to some bad words.

" A license for a motorbike. I find the Belkan designation sounding better." Iskanda traduced.

" So, we are back in the war." Pixy stated, almost regretting those three days outside of Valais, especially the one with Maggie. She had definitely raised some wondering in his mind about the finitude of this war. He didn't like to show it, but like many of his Ustian comrades, he was a great idealist.

" Yeah. And the next stop will definitely Glatisant. Damned, Sainte Victoire could have left it in ruins." Iskanda exclaimed, now knowing the role of this lady in the upgrade of this fortress, and above all its continuous improvement throughout the centuries. Of course, they surely updated the crossbows and the musket since her era, but with Belkan and Ustian resistance fighter modernizing old weapons, they could be expecting anything.

" I have a historian teacher college who made a thesis about the resilience of old defensive structure to modern weaponry." Thesermeister intervened, thinking to all those lines -about more than one thousand for sure- he read at this moment when this college asked for some check about some physics in his research.

" And so, what's the more resilient, mein lieber Thesermeister? Modernized castle like Glatislant or geometric ones like the one at Bayes?" Koenig asked for some scientific viewpoint on their next obstacle.

" Does it require more than two FAEBs to go down? I mean, it was enough to trash Bayes, a hypersonic missile and Gelb 1." Iskanda guessed, even if the Glatislant was way more stretched than Bayes.

" Definitely I do not think FAEBs would be enough to take it down alone. Or you would have to make them detonate in the inside of the walls to shatter them." Valentin gave his final analysis. Soon this talk would end anyway. The lights on the pylons leading to Valais Air Base were now in sight.

" From the inside you said? I will remember this." Iskanda promised to herself, if some crazy scheme needed to be set in motion to destroy the Glatislant.

" I hope it's not what she means." Pixy mused, looking at the quite numerous formation that would accompany then for the assault on Mt Ivrea. There was the Komyeta and Halo squad obviously, along with the Osean Claw squadron and another squadron of Osean fighter, the Falchion team comprised of eight F/A-18Cs with the said weapon as their symbol and a light grey two-tone camo with black ailerons and dark grey wingtips. Surely other Osean, Yukte and Sapin squadron would join the fireball tomorrow, he guessed.

A few minutes later, all pilots landed. Due to the lack of place in Valais Air Base, the Hornet's wings had to be folded in their respective hangar, like it would be done on carriers. And if they were welcome here by the cold weather of the Valaisian Alps, Belkans would without any doubt welcome them with very warm hospitality.

 **Thus, end the bit of tourism I allowed my pilot to make. After all, merc are humans too (#belkanarehumanstoo) ...About the long passage about the cathedral, I see it a bit as a way to pay homage to Notre Dame de Paris. I hope you won't find me too long in my descriptions or in my flights of philosophy. And of course, our allies have problems, but who hasn't in war? All have. Feel free to comment, subscribe, follow, review... (And enjoy vacations for the ones having them, like I do) …**  
 **16/01/20: some grammatical mistakes fixed**


	12. Chapter 7: Operation Hell Bound

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 17/05/1995, 15:00, Weather: medium level of cloud coverage.**

It was one of the days were all was average at Valais. The temperature was around an average zero, and the visibility an average level a bit above the necessary limits for a safe take-off. The only unaverage thing was the greater number of pilots, almost higher than non-flying personals for once at this base, all of this due to its position not that far away from the Belkan fortress of Glatisant.

But right now, all pilots were a bit laughing, as they were listening to the broadcast of the Assembly of Nations. Even without knowing the outcome of tomorrow's meeting, they knew they would attack soon. After all, since when did Osea take care of the notices of this useless Assembly of Nations, Pixy wondered.

" This is Ufree Fm, transmitting through our special envoy from the Assembly of Nations." The speaker began its broadcast.

" This is Denis Delacre for Ufree Fm. And here I am, at the Assembly of Nations. The debate has already begun, but don't worry, you won't miss a line here, whenever you're listening at Solis Ortus or in the Valaisian Alps." The special envoy introduced its theme, while a Belkan representative, a fifty-year-old woman was screaming at her Osean colleague " This is outrageous, this is unfair!"

" I am only asking for an inquiry in Belka, to verify that they possess WMDs, and if so to confiscate them." The Osean representative harshly replied.

" Denn you should begin by listing and giving up yours!" The Belkan representative barked, infuriated by Osean sick rhetoric's.

" Damn, Frau Ursula Reutner is quite in good voice today. These politicians must have been opera singer to have such lungs." The Ustian envoy said in a short quiet time, as the Osean was gathering his note to respond quickly.

" My fellow members of the Assembly of Nations, we are speaking of disarming a far-right regime so it cannot arm its own citizens if defeated. Defeated countries often use WMDs as final deterrence without any care for their people. Our goal is humanitarian." The Osean representative began its speech but was cut by a still infuriated Belkan voice.

" Humanitarian? Since when bombing and war is humanitarian?"

" On this point I agree with my distinguished colleague, Osean. Belka has almost better reasons to go to war from this "humanitarian" perspective." The Erusean representative intervened, more than happy to bother and contradict Osea, if it could delay the spreading of their influence on the Usean continent.

" Our goal is to liberate people. To give them freedom and economic prosperity." The Osean representative stated, trying to find more righteous reason than a false humanitarian one.

" Give us economic prosperity? Ich lache! The Mt Schirm crisis was your doings! You left us with nothing more than useless overpriced crawlers, and our economy crawling in recession! You only sought to have economic control by trying to buy our entire land after you put us in recession! Yet we won't bow like those countries of southern Usea!" Frau Reutner retorted even louder than before.

" I have to admit that a commission should be appointed to study this crisis in peacetime, when freedom of movement will have been restored within Belka." The Yukte representative shared his mind, even if it was what he agreed to say to defend the allied intervention, in which they would be taking action.

" Freedom? Because you think Osea has the right to take and give freedom more than us?" She tried to show that the Osean weren't more righteous than Belkans. There were just two countries seeking to annihilate each other.

" We are the Land of Freedom. Freedom of thought, of business..." The Osean representative began to speak but was again violently interrupted by his Belkan counterpart.

" Liberty of business only I believe. Don't try to smart mouth me, Wilson! It's not because you have some fracking Manifest of Destiny in which you wrote that you were some god special envoy that you are!" Reutner finished spitting her venom against those mighty Osean that believed in this pretentious moral high ground.

" Is this what the Assembly of Nations has become? A place for shouting matches between Osea and Belka?" The representative of the Estovakian federal republic interrupted this almost comic show.

" I agree with my fellow colleague and neighbor, this assembly is again stuck by Osean sick trades and Belkan recklessness, when we should be thinking to more serious matter such as how to deal with Ulysses fragments." The Emmerian representative completed this neighboring country.

" Speaking of such, I am sorry to announce that the sixth shot of Stonehenge failed due to some light solar burst that mess with the measurements." San Salvation's representative spoke, definitely putting aside the Belkan-Osean rivalry to talk about Ulysse.

" And until we will have dealt with it, even after your puny war, we will all have a sword of Damocles above our heads. Therefore, such conflict should be put aside." The Erusean representative intervened, backing the Ustian and Sapins who were more for a temporary truce and new elections in Belka. But not Osea neither Belka could accept such dishonoring end. Yet the word ''sword'' caused the beginning of the smirk to appear on Frau Reutner face, but she hid it very well, and that wasn't transmitted on the waves.

And of course, this was less funny to talk about, causing the pilots in the restroom to shut the radio. Some began to dither about the talk, with at one time even Oseans admitting that these concerns about Ulysses were not nothing, and that maybe the assembly of nation should act. Maybe even some Belkans they would meet and very likely kill this afternoon had come to similar conclusions. Yet who could have the wisdom and the technological advancement needed to successfully disrupt the fragments from their trajectory, thus sparing millions of death and decades of chaos for the countries in the foreseen area of impact?

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 17/05/1995, 15:40, Weather: clear.**

After minutes of discussion about what happened at the assembly of nation between pilots of different nations, which thus had different mind about its role, meaning or true power. And even if Osea hadn't obtain a clear authorization to invade Belka it wouldn't be that long. Otherwise why would they gather their main pilots and squad leader to brief them about the threats up there at Glatisant?

This time the Axe and Hammer mapping system was centered on the peaks of Mt Ivrea. The mountain plateau in which Mt Ivrea was behind the Belkan city of Lumen, which was considered by many as already won by the allied forces. These small mountains chain was basically linking the great Lakes and B7R, a bit behind Osean and Sapin border with Belka. Still, if on this map it seemed to be a small area it was quite the opposite. Modernized castles, anti-aircraft bunkers, barracks, ramparts and all type of exiting defense against all kind of opponents were running on hundreds of kilometers.

" Osean Intelligence reports that Belka would be developing nuclear arms and Vergeltungswaffe 2(weapon of vengeance), a weapon of mass destruction. The Allied Forces' top brass have decided to send troops across the Hydrian Line to check for nuclear arms and secure resource interests. Centered on the modernized base of Glatisant, the Hydrian Line, Belka's long line of defense, stretches 700 km from Osea's southern border to the border of Sapin. Your mission to all of you and all of your subordinates is to launch an aerial strike on Glatisant to open the door to Belka for our ground troops." Koenig began the briefing, hearing some sarcastic laugh from Larry Foulke when he said the reason why they were doing this. He would have done the same thing, if these top brasses wanted his mindset about this so-called liberator invasion.

" For those who didn't make some tourism there or in Directus, I'll describe briefly the five main zones of the Hydrian Line. First is area Gate at the South-East, you will be coming right on it. It's a heptagonal shaped castle, with great amount of weaponry nearby, on its towers or within it and at the top of its walls. Second is the area Wall, comprised mainly of the main control tower surrounded by smaller tower fit with lots of anti-aircraft weaponry, while on the nearby mountainside you can expect quite a number of AA bunkers. Third is area Caste to the South-West, this time an octagonal castle built on another peak, with two main towers on each side of it and a large defensive wall on which dozens of AA guns, SPKs or SAMs could be set on. Fourth is area Garden at the North-West, the logistical center of the Hydrian line, it was former fields that allowed the Fortress to sustain itself, and now it's filled with warehouses and bunkers. And finally, the fifth area of the Twin Barbican at the North-East, it's another AA heavy defense with two twin towers and lots of smaller ones surrounding them. Therefore, I wouldn't recommend in any case to fly too close to them."

" Now you can realize that the door of Belka will be harder to hack than a fifth-point security door. In all probability, this will be an extended operation, and you will not be the only one taking action in it. Osean and Yukte strikers, jammers and bombers will also take action to destroy the heaviest fortified defenses, and you will have to defend them from the Belkan defensive squadrons, mainly multirole or strike fighters such as MiG-29As and F-15Es. Yet as you will be far from here, you may have to refuel in mid-air first and even come here to rearm, as overshoots may be necessary for clean landing here. Understood? Now dismissed, and good luck up there, people." Koenig finally ended his briefing. How many lives would the allied lose today was a good question. But the answer would always be a great number, whenever they went out as victors or victims.

" Damn, that's going to be one hell of a fight." An Osean pilot admitted, as the cluster of pilots was spreading toward their hangars.

" This war already put me through hell and heaven anyway. Just our op in B7R was in the middle of it." Iskanda commented as she joined Pixy in the hangar.

" Well, Belkan hospitality wird wie verrückt verbrennen (it will burn like hell)." Pixy replied, agreeing with Koenig that this fight was going to be a tough and long one, while they were picking solely air-to-ground weaponry, with UGLBs for him and a mix of four LAGMs and four FAEBs for his leader.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 17/05/1995, 15:45, Weather: clear but with medium risk of snow.**

Some aircraft were in the air, other taxiing to the runway, other on the runway. And soon it was the turn of the Galm team:

" Galm 1, Galm 2, clear for take-off." The control tower operator Henri Blaise announced.

" Roger, lifting off." The two pilots responded in unison, before following the long line of plane that were taking off. Of course, their jet wash was a bit bothering, and the massive trails such a massive formation taking off was creating too, but they manage to go to the sky without major issues. They even had the time to overrun some slower Hornets before Blaise gave them the second clearance:

" Galm 1 and 2, maintain altitude and course toward bearing 300. Good luck"

" That's nice to see all those airplanes taking off." Iskanda observed, as the final two brand-new Su-33 provided by Yuktobania to the Komyeta team were taking off.

" I agree, Nice aerial ballet from the AWACS's cams." Francis said, onboard the AWACS due to his wounds. He truly hoped he could fight in the next operation, as his wound was healing quite quickly.

 **Area Gate, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17/05/1995, 16:30, Weather: thick cloud coverage.**

They were all approaching from the valley that was linking the Sapins and Ustian plains to the Glatisant, maybe taking the same path Sainte Victoire took four centuries ago. A squadron of Tornado Gr4 had joined them. Their callsign was Fenrir. They were mercs rent by Gebet and Recta to Osea. It was the only way for those two defeated countries to help in this war.

On their approach, they saw the allied assault force sent to take the city of Lumen. The formation was a typical Osean one: a flight of ten B-1s to suppress early defensive systems, followed by twelve C-5s and eight AC-130s to drop and support airborne units, and then choppers flights comprised of AH-64s and CH-17s for the Oseans, with some Mi-24s and Ka-52s for the Yukte. They were escorted by more than sixty aircraft. Maybe if Lumen fall quickly some B-1s or strike fighters could come help them. Or others could be in route right now.

But right now, the Galm, Halo, Komyeta and Claw team were launching themselves on its first line of defense, while the Falchion squad was a bit behind. Flying at very low altitude, they could see the old walls at the feet of the first peak of the Mt Ivrea, were the heptagonal shaped castle was standing proudly like a doigt d'honneur to the allied forces.

" Nuclear inspection. Es ist die größten Witze dieses Jahrhunderts (it's the biggest joke of the century)." Pixy said with a shit-ton of sarcasm, while destroying a SAM that had come out of hiding.

" Yeah, the Osean could have thought of something better. But they are Oseans." Iskanda added, firing her guns on a SAM that was first hidden behind some wall and try to fire at them from their six hours.

Two other SAMs and AA guns sites were dispatched by the Komyeta and Halo team respectively. Then as they climb toward the fortress, they saw tunnels on the mountainside. And from all tunnels were approaching others AA batteries. Yet a barrage of long-range missile from the Hornets cleaned them temporarily

" Fire a missile in the hole." An Osean pilot -Falchion 4 to be precise- suggested, as other vehicles were coming to reinforce those points.

" Galm 1, roger that." She agreed, even if she would have rather done something funnier with those tunnels. With one missile she destroyed one of them. Pixy dispatched another easily, and the two others were by two GPBs from the twin witches.

The Falchion squad climbed too, reaching the altitude of the wall of the heptagonal shaped castle. A volley of air-to-ground missile struck the defense standing at the wall's feet. Yet some Hornet took some hits from the Glatislant upper defenses. And soon the announce they were afraid to hear finally came:

" BAWS launch detected. A full dozen of them. Fenrir squad, activate ECM and be ready for evasive maneuvers." The AWACS operator warned the least mobile planes.

The seven Ustian mercenaries and six Mirages climbed vertically over the castle, trailed by an helluva amount of Belkan bullets. Then they all dived on the ten BAWS launchers on the inside, each of them launching two missiles and a bit of their ordnance. Unguided and guided bombs, submunition, rockets and air-to-ground heavy missile were fired in the courtyard of the castle. As they leveled, they all choose a different vector, each targeting one tower with missile and gun that reloaded during their dive, with the Claw squadron finishing the few defenses still standing after this blitzkrieg attack.

In the end, the castle was left striped away of its main aerial defenses for the time, but not a single wall had collapsed. The Belkan would just need some transport chopper to bring new AA guns and the Gate area would be closed again. And if the Ustian only suffered light hits, the BAWS shot down half of the Osean and Gebetan-Rectan squadron. To be fair not all of them were destroyed by the high velocity missiles it produced, with some hitting flying debris of their comrades, this mainly happening for the Gr4s.

" We have some news of Lumen. The B-1s have dealt with the heavier defense. They have enough payload left to turn the towers of this castle into rubble." The AWACS shared this latest intel on the other battle of today.

" By the way, the space observers Osea launched yesterday have sent us the final data they collect on the Wall area. To say things short, not even a LAGM would leave a dent on the main tower's wall. You will have to destroy the anti-aircraft bunkers and the small guns for the Lancers." Francis added from their E-767.

" Roger. It's not like there was almost a good two hundred kilometers between the two areas." Fred said, as they left the castle to the Osean strikers.

 **Area Wall, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17/05/1995, 16:50, Weather: thick cloud coverage.**

The weather was getting worse and worse, like if even the elements were against then today. It was now raining cats and dogs, and this wasn't making their job easier. The last thing they need was a thunderstorm about Glatisant. Their planes were lightning proof theoretically, but they did not wanted to probe it.

Let alone the weather, the journey between the two zones was quite easy. They only had two SAMs site to clear on their way toward the control tower. The control tower was visible from very far away due to its massive size. Its diameter was maybe bigger than the width of an An-225 main body. It was on a high peak again, surrounded by small towers and old walls, with a plethora of SAMs and AA guns around it. There was tunnels too, but the second they showed up in the area they were closed by small cupola in ferro-concrete. And they were doubting about their armament piercing capacities.

The second thing that spread doubt between their ranks was the wreckage of an entire squadron of B-52s Stratofortress laying shattered one kilometer before the fortress.

" Plane wrecks. The Glatisant must have shot down them here when we try to counter-attack two days before the fall of Wesson." Claw leader described the desolate site that was welcoming them.

" Verdammt, an Ocean of bullet is coming on us." Pixy swore, as the entire AA guns of the tower, the bunkers and the mobiles guns began to fire. The guns of the tower have been set on the old lancet holes of it, enabling it to fire in all vectors.

" I would say more of a tsunami of bullet but you're right Pixy. Try to fly low but higher than the AA bunkers." Iskanda recommended, as she had escaped the fire of the one at the front, and temporarily paralyzed it through a pair of standard missiles on its top walls. A pair of GPBs of Claw 5 finished the building.

" Target destroyed. Just stick with the Galm team and you will made it!" Claw 5 said, following the nimble X-29A as it was flying with a fantastic audacity between the small secondary towers, launching missiles on some SAMs set on top of it, which could not counter-attack as in her posture she was lower than their line of fire.

At least, the Mirage were good infiltrators, and thus made for flying low, and it wasn't difficult either for the mobile aircraft of the Sixth Unit. Yet the F/A-18Cs and the Gebetan crafts were much more endangered. And soon Francis, Phil and Koenig saw with powerlessness the allied crafts getting shot down one by one.

And it kept this way for a good five minutes. Of course, a great number of SAMs and AA guns, with the SPKs protecting them were downed, along with the AA bunkers. Still, the defensive structures were not damaged, and from time to time, AA guns or mobile SAMs would emerge from hidden lifts, making sure they would not reveal where they were coming from.

The losses were counting. And Belka hadn't engaged its defensive squadrons yet. On the other hand, Osea sent a squadron of F-20As Tigershark but they were shot down between the area Gate and Wall. Maybe Belkan stealth plane were already engaged somewhere around here, but the very poor weather conditions reduced greatly the AWACS sensors.

But for three minutes, the pilots were only resorting to evasive maneuvers, circling around the control tower while some try to saturate its powerful SPK network. They had seen the ten B-1s incoming on their radar. And now they were somewhere in the clouds, two or three kilometers away from the main control tower, almost a kilometer higher than the peak.

Yet, as they opened their bombs bay, they revealed their presence a bit more, negating the stealth those clouds provide them. It was at this moment that the Vampir squadron decided to attack for a second time Osean attackers. From ten F-117Zs with a dark two-tone night camo with an emblem being two blooded fangs on the nose of their fighter was fired a volley of ERAAMs (Extreme long-range anti-air missile). Those stealth missile with specific aerodynamics that rendered them nearly silent even if they were going supersonic could literally turn those new Nighthawks Zerstörer into an anti-bomber stealth platform. Hopefully they could only lock at bombers from their extreme range of 10 kilometers, and only fired one at a time

" This is Angel 1, I'm down!" The first B-1 was hit and exploded, followed by all members of this squadron of Osean bombers. Some blew up right in mid-air, with other avoiding direct hit but ending crashing on the mountainside.

And soon it was the turn of the Gr4s to be targeted by the Vampir squadron. Yet the Belkan had to come closer to get proper lock-ons. However, with them being near the Ustian mercenaries, they were on the verge of being spot if they fired a fourth time.

" What are you doing with your plane, Galm 1?" Claw leader asked.

" Trying to get a reading through my secondary radar. It can go into very low frequencies, like the old one of the Griffon." She explained her doing, and five seconds later, as she was going through every frequency possible, a full group of F-117s were spotted by her belly radar. Yet the IFF had trouble identifying them, like if they were another unknown version of the Nighthawk only produced in Belka.

" Transmitting data to all crafts. Hunt and kill them." The AWACS operator ordered, as they linked all radar data together. " Then use your own IR sensor when you will be in range."

" Roger that." Claw leader replied with haste as he was leading the Oseans Hornets which lost their leader to the threat. There was still twelve Hornets and six Mirages at this point.

" We're following you. Seek and destroy!" Halo 10 exclaimed, quickly catching up with the Oseans.

However, the F-117Zs had the time to fire a final ERAAMs volley before the allied fighters arrived at XLAA or SAAMs range. Ten Hornets added themselves to the kills of this squadron. Still, their last stand wasn't that long. Tracked by the combined radar of nearly twenty aircraft, volleys of XLAAs, XMAAs and SAAMs were shot at the Vampir squadron. No chute was sighted amongst its members.

" Gott Verdammt, those new Nighthawks were deadly." Fred cursed, as the AWACS was counting their losses.

Twenty F-20As. Ten B-1s. Ten Gr4s and ten Hornets. Fifty aircrafts in total. If ten stealth not made for air-to-air combat could bag so many kills, what could happen if Belka engage stealth meant for combat, Valentin analyzed. He was shock by the likelihood of such massive casualties other Schayne plains in the oncoming weeks, or anytime soon if they went deeper into Belkan territory. Yet both Yuktobania and Osea weren't afraid to engage even hundreds of assets to force Belka into submission. This was the textbook definition of a military superpower.

" This is Eagle Eye, MiG-29As and Belkan F-15Es coming from the North-West." The AWACS announced, as twelve fighters of each type went out of the jammed area Garden. The Fulcrums were spotting grey fuselage with dark grey wings and dark ailerons while the Strike Eagle's had a two-tone night camo with black ailerons.

" Eagle Eye, why can't we see the other area on our radar? We could attack them and then destroyed this tower when we have enough fire power." Halo 7 asked, as they were evading SAAMs volleys launched by the Fulcrums and the Strike Eagle alike. It wasn't that hard with these missiles having low mobility but fired by numerous aircraft allowed their user to keep the allied forces at a distance.

" We can't because those three areas are jammed by blimps. You could destroy them if you had the time and good visibility, but we have not the one nor the other. Henceforth we had to destroy the control tower, as it controls this jamming too." The AWACS operator nodded with the mind of Fred but was sorry that Belka was forcing them to play along their rules even if they were the defenders here.

" These pesky Belkan tacticians are cunning, I have to give them that." Iskanda commented this step in this Belkan counterattack.

They would deal with the Fulcrums and Strike Eagles in due time, she knew it. Yet to catch the quicker way those foes that were firing from long range they would end up behind the control tower, and thus would get caught into massive crossfire. But while approaching the mountainside before this castle, she suddenly saw a massive gap into the cupola of one tunnel. A B-1 must have crashed there with all its payload being powerful enough to leave this dent on this ferro-concrete wall.

" Galm 1 here, I have found a vector of approach. Have fun dealing with the fighters without me." She announced as she slowed down to almost stalling speed, reducing her speed greatly in order to aim the tight gap in the Belkan fortress precisely, and preparing her night goggles.

" I bet she was getting bored and this is why she had to bore her way through Glatisant." Francis said, causing some laugh amongst the AWACS crew.

" Will you ever run out of crazy idea, Frau Deadpool?" Koenig asked after a massive sigh.

" Nope." She replied quickly with a playful voice, which caused her wingmen to sigh too. In spite of their losses, she was taking her tall here.

The tight frame of the X-29A rushed through the gap and thus disappeared from allied radars, this didn't worry her wingmen a single bit as he was getting used to her crazy schemes by now. Yet unlike the one at Solis Ortus this tunnel wasn't empty. She arrived right between two AA guns that were meant to go on the platform before the cupola was closed. She was so quick that she didn't have the time to destroy them. And unlike four days before, she didn't stay unnoticed for long, even before she started gunning the small railway shuttle on her path, which allowed the Belkans to move at a speed great enough to adapt themselves to the outside threats.

" Aircraft flying inside. Close the security doors. Immediately. I prefer to have a shuttle cut in half than a fighter bombing us from the inside." The Belkan Oberst in charge of this area ordered to his subordinates. And in the second following this order, gates began to close, red lights along with a high pitch alarm came to life.

" Ach Quatsch. I'm not planning on getting stuck here." Iskanda said, even if only the Belkans could hear her right now.

Her advanced sensors she kept from her first inside flight had detected three gates. Stepping on the gas and tilting her aircraft at ninety degree, she went through the first gate easily. Yet the two others were closing fast. Too fast for her aircraft current speed. And she knew her LAGMs would not pierce those gates. However, they might stall their motion. Thus, she fired one LAGM and one missile on the second and the third door, with her gun still firing at everything that moved in her path, setting SAMs, tanks or howitzer ablaze.

" Gottverdammt this pilot managed to stall the door, Oberst." A servant in the control tower complained.

" Begin evacuation to the enclave then, use the emergency lifts and lock the main one. Und verschließe diese Schutztüren!" The Oberst chose to live to fight another day instead of making a foolish last stand.

" Even the Ustians?" One officer asked quickly. At this point Iskanda had passed through the second gate, but almost hitting her aileron.

" Natürlich. They are prisoners, not human shields!" The Oberst almost shouted to his subordinates, which was maybe more conditioned by the Rald Partei than he was.

" Ver Oberst Gangl." The officer nodded.

Iskanda's X-29A was at the third gate by now. But if the two first door were closing along a vertical axis; this one was along a horizontal one. So, she tilted her airplane by ninety degree again, but counterclockwise. And ended up flying inverted in a tunnel, having to constantly level her airplane. Furthermore, her radar indicated her than the way up was getting obstructed by a moving lift. She had to arrive before it if she wanted to internally destroy this castle. Kicking the burner, she flew toward the vertical tunnel with a fantastic audacity.

By sheer luck she passed the gate which has restarted its closing motion just in time. If she had the long rear-facing radar of those new Belkan Flankers, the two side of the gate would have caught her by her aircraft's tail. Then on a hunch she fired her third LAGM, only two hundred meters before the vertical tunnel.

Surprisingly her belly radar showed her than the lift had stop its motion. Maybe the blast of her LAGM had activated its emergency brakes. Thus, she could dive into this vertical tunnel with ease. Yet in this second inside flight, she was again happy to be flying such a tiny aircraft, or she wouldn't have been able to fly through this vertical tunnel - the elevator shaft- to be precise.

She didn't have to fly very fast to arrive at the last level were the Belkan arsenal was stored, as gravity was helping her on her way down. Yet if the blast of her LAGM stalled the lift for a time, it fell right behind her. So yes, she had to dive quite fast to be honest, as gravity was accelerating the loose lift too.

When she arrived at the arsenal's level, the elevator shaft turned into a metallic structure. Extending her airbrakes while leveling for a moment that seemed desperately long as the lift was still falling on her, she managed to get through a gap in the metallic structure, and the lift fell where she was ten second later. She was now in a great cave, -artificial or natural she couldn't know- where armament of all sorts and all calibers were piling up. Her altimeter -which she to be honest didn't understand how it could work inside of a building- was showing 1800 meters. While according to allied data this control tower was culminating at 3400 meters. Which meant the elevator shaft was just huge. Even the Osean skyscrapers were tiny things in comparison with this elevator shaft.

But she wasn't here for architectural study... So, she dropped her four static FAEBs, which hovered for a bit in the cave, above the giant howitzer shells and ballistic ammo for the BAWS, having previously set a detonation time of twelve second while circling around the metallic structure of the elevator shaft. It was more than enough time to drop the four, then go back through some gap in the metallic structure and kick the burner in this vertical tunnel.

And as she was at 2.1 kilometers, her FAEBs blow up, setting fire to the whole Belkan arsenal stored here. And now she could see a very bright orange light on her rearview mirror that was brightening by the second: the blast was getting closer and closer, and if she didn't want to end roasted, she would have to escape fast. Crushed by the G-forces on her seat she pushed the afterburners to their peak. She surely would need to resupply after using them so much. Knowing there was a roof on the top of the tower, she fired her last LAGM vertically, and hoped it would detonate on the said roof without endangering her too much.

 **Area Wall, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17/05/1995, 17:10, Weather: thick cloud coverage.**

As soon as the control tower was evacuated its fire output decreased, allowing the allied planes to circle around it and attack the Belkan fighters in numerical advantage. Hopefully for them the Caravahan squadron had been dispatched to help them, and twelve F-14Ds with a standard navy-blue camo were good to help again twenty-four attackers spamming SAAMs. Four of its members were shot down along with 2 members of Claw squadron. The twin witches had to retreat too, without XLAAs, yet with a good load of Belkan bullets on her wings, tail and ailerons.

But even as they were still finishing the last Belkan craft, all aircraft could see the consequences of Iskanda's inside flight. All ferro-concrete cupola closing the tunnel blew up, with great flames pouring out of them. It was the same everywhere: out of every opening of the fortress bright flames were coming. Pixy and all the sixth Unit began to worry for his leader.

" Come on, Galm 1, respond!" Francis shouted from the AWACS, were a worried operator and admiral were watching the thermal image of area Wall, but the massive inside fire made their efforts to find Iskanda's craft useless.

" I think she had a good probability of survival in her model." Valentin estimated, as flames began to pour from the first level of the control tower. Pixy was now as worried as when he left his first leader to defend his escape.

But five second later, a massive inner explosion sent the roof of the tower into the sky, leaving an opening for his leader's X-29A. She flew vertically for a while, as the massive column of fire was extending out of the tower, followed by a stream of bright overheated rocks. At one point she had smell the smoke even with her OBOGS. Or was it that her aircraft was beginning to burn? She wasn't very sure. In life or death situation like this one she just survived there was no certainty.

" You did it!" Claw 3 congratulated her.

" Well, now the intern geologic structure will fall if my estimations of the Belkan arsenal are good enough." Komyeta 1 commented, as he was leaving quite quickly the airspace right above the mountain.

" Glatisant is going to collapse. All unit, go to the Castle area or refuel for the ones who need it." Their AWACS operator ordered after sighing for a bit, authorizing himself to have some relief after he went hyperventilating due to his worries.

Indeed, it was collapsing. The ground was shattering under the force of the explosive blowing up inside the bored mountain. Flames and burning rocks, overheated metallic and human remains were propelled at great speed into the sky.

" It looks like a volcanic eruption." Pixy described, having seen one while travelling with Laura. It was one on some island at the extreme South-East of the Usean continent. Some Belkan geologist payed them just to take some picture of it. Yet it has been a very dangerous task due to gases, cinder messing with the engine and the eruption itself inducing very powerful turbulences.

And at last, in agony, Glatisant collapsed. The peak of the mountains imploded, before its geologic structure was shattered by the formidable explosion inside of it. The remains of the control towers and all the towers which were on top of the mountains vanished into an ocean of flames, as if they were falling in the crater of an active volcano. All that was left from the proud fortress Sainte Victoire had built nearly four centuries ago was a giant caldera of maybe two kilometer in diameter, or even more, with the munitions and the fuel still burning inside. At least the fire was confined inside the caldera, as the mountain collapsed on itself.

" Great. Now do that thing three more times and we can be sure Glatisant offensive power will definitely be neutralized. This battle will definitely change the look of this place." Pixy commented the crazy scheme of his leader that led to such devastation. Hopefully the Belkan had no nukes stored there.

" Well I won't do that all day. When you smell your own aircraft burning you become a bit more cautious after." Her leader replied, before leaving the battle area to refuel.

" Don't worry Galm 1, we will leave you at least one area for you to shine again." Alekseï responded, as he headed with the main force toward the area Castle.

" Good luck then." She wished them. They would need it, with the two big AA towers there, which weren't as big as the control tower but together could bring quite a lot of firepower. Furthermore, a great number of choppers had been located there. They had little chance of taking down fighter by themselves but having to evade their fire could disturb the fighters and put them in harm's way.

 **Area Castle, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17/05/1995, 17:30. Weather; thick cloud coverage.**

Going from area Wall to refuel surely took her some time. And in spite of her having a quicker X-29A, this back and forth travel needed by the overuse of her afterburners should have given all the other pilots the time to utterly destroy the Area Castle. Or that's what she was guessing when she arrived on the said area, thinking of seeing just another desolate castle turned into ruins by the allied firepower.

Well of course the Belkan choppers weren't considered as a force to be recon with. And their action was helped by a counterattack of ten MiG-29As, which were shot down at the expense of all remaining Oseans F/A-18Cs and F-14Ds. Now the allied forces had already lost more than sixty aircrafts, with few chutes sighted. Yet having to bail out above this kind of place didn't guarantee survival. But when the Belkan Apaches shot down four of the twelve A-10A that Osea sent as reinforcements as well as some bail-outing pilots, the few bits of reluctance the fighters pilots possessed vanished, and all AH-64s were quickly sent into oblivion.

Dropping massive amounts of FAEBs, the A-10As were obliterating all external defenses. Furthermore, the second tower ceased to fire when their second bombing run was over, and at the same moment Iskanda arrived. Yet she wasn't the only one to arrive in the area. Six Su-32 Strike Flanker with a dark green two-tone camo were entering the airspace, and immediately fired volleys of XMAAs on the Oseans strikers.

" Damned it. Do something, Galm team." An A-10A pilot complained, flying only with one active engine left.

" Almost all our planes are out of long-range anti-air armament." The AWACS operator specified.

But they had plenty of missiles left. And they were far more mobile than the Strike Flankers. Two were shot down by the Komyeta team, and the four others were shot down by the Galm team resorting to gunning one while shooting missile on another one. By luck one of the Flankers hit the second AA towers hard. It was enough to leave a dent in the Belkan defensive structure, and without losing any moment the few A-10A and Mirage pilots exploited it. The Area Rempart was finished in a matter of seconds.

" Area Castle has lost all defensive power. All allied forces, attack the airfield of area Garden." Their AWACS operator ordered.

" Roger that." Claw 2 responded. Even if they were with only two or three GPBs each and three airplanes, they followed the Ustian mercs. Even if there was only one Strike Eagles, the Galm and Komyeta team, along with three A-10As, they would not back down. On the long-range radar, they could saw the Mage squadron coming from their assignment in Wesson. Still, as they arrived late last time, the allied pilots were afraid this squadron would arrive too late again.

 **Area Garden, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17:50, 17/05/1995, Weather: thick cloud coverage.**

" This is Eagle Eye. Confirming presence of numerous Harrier hidden in this area." The AWACS operator transmitted the data from the X-37s space drones the Osean army deployed to overcome their loss of spy satellites. Thus, their HUD was now displaying the position of the said VTOLs

" We are already coming on them. We have enough ammo to destroy them and their hangar I think." Claw leader assumed, confident in their escorts' abilities.

" Forward SAMs have been deployed! Fire on those invaders." A Belkan servant said.

Indeed, the Garden area was preceded by two small cliffs, with little castles on them, all of them equipped with SAMs and AA guns on their towers. The Galm and Komyeta teams dealt quickly with the latter, before gunning a bit some warehouses. Even if they could not destroy them, every round fired was counting today. Then one of the last Belkan HQ of the area appeared in their eyesight. It was an old Orangery, yet with rows of semi-cylindrical turret where the high glass doors once were. And their combination of SPKs and AA guns made an attack against this target very likely to be costly. So, the Ustian pilots, and later the Claw squadron climb over it, right on the Harriers' airfield.

" Just gun them a bit. VTOL are quite fragile when taking off." Galm 1 suggested, as she was quite low even on missile: less than twenty.

" You're right, this is one of the main hindrances of our F-35Bs. Even if it's rumored than Belka produced a few of them in Hoffnung." Claw 1 agreed while firing his centerline gun pod.

The seven aircraft gunned continuously the Harriers, damaging them before they could take off. The majority weren't destroyed, but their pilots were killed or for the luckiest ones wounded by the enemy gunfire. Few did explode and began to spread small fire. Of course, the bunkers were mostly unarmed, but the rampant fire was beginning to engulf some. But they would need the heavy rockets the A-10As were equipped with, as they already used their FAEBs in the previous area.

When the Warthogs arrived over their target, most of the Harriers were burning in the field behind the Orangery. The few that did manage to take off were outmaneuvered by the more agile fighters, even when they tried to make their pursuer overshoot through their VTOL capacities. And the fighters already had a strategy to saturate the defenses of the latter.

" Beginning rocket fire." One Warthog Osean pilot said, and as he was saying that, he saw the seven remaining allied aircraft dived from high on the turrets.

The volleys of rockets weren't easy to intercept, but this building could deal with them. Yet they weren't the only one to fire on this defensive structure. Standard missiles fell vertically on the Belkan towers, either saturating them or stalling their fire. Still, the few flak guns the Belkan had set up between those turrets were enough of a threat, and this threat become obvious when one Mirage was downed and two other suffered nasty hits. But at least the Belkan structure was crippled.

" Area Garden has lost its defensive capacities. A-10As, kept destroying the bunker in the area. Komyeta squad, Halo 7, you've already suffered quite a lot of damage, escort Claw 1 and 3 to the safety line." Their AWACS operator ordered, seeing that the two Yukte and Ustian had sixty, seventy, and fifty-five percent of damage, respectively.

But as the Osean Warthogs flew over the building, they were shot one by one by pairs of QAAMs. Four Belkan Harriers had managed to take off from a warehouse with its ceiling destroyed by some missile in the first attack run of the fighters.

" Galm 1, engage!"

" They will be terminated quicker than those Terminators." Iskanda exclaimed, ready to slaughter what she considered to be underdogs in every statistic.

" Galm 2, Fox 2." Pixy announced as he fired on one Harrier before gunning the cockpit of the other.

Iskanda went for a similar attack, yet it differed in her strafing run. One Harrier fall to her missiles, before she pulled out a very sharp turn to fire her gun in the nine hours of the last surviving Harrier. His forward vectored nozzles his craft used for take-off burst, and quickly the plane turned into a ball of fire.

" Area Garden is clear of enemy presence." The AWACS operator quickly recalled the results of this quick slaughter, before resuming his notices: " You can now head for the final area. Osea has dispatched the Mage and Zebra squadron to help you there."

" But the X-37s space drones have seen some kind of train getting out of some entrance on a promontory just in front of the twin AA towers." Koenig added, looking to the data those spy planes were transmitting. Soon they would change their orbit in order to get some data for further advances in the Schayne plains.

At this notice, to which the pilot simply nodded by a " roger, will be ready for anything they will throw at us.", they couldn't do nothing but worry a bit. Indeed, since the operation of Solis Ortus, Belkan train had become synonym of their railway tactical laser system they could put on it.

 **Area Castle, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 17/05/1995, 17:30, Weather: thick cloud coverage.**

Two squadron had joined with the allied strike force. The 230th and 450th wing of Osean fighters, respectively named Mage and Zebra squadron. The first was a flight of ten F-15C with a dark grey camo and the second six F-15Es with a grey paintjob and black stripes. Both were full on ammo unlike the Galm team, as they were coming from Lumen where they had rearmed in the recently captured airport of the said city.

" This is Mage leader. I have some kind of train right below me, a bit before these twin towers. Engaging now." The Osean pilot indicated, arming his UGLBs. Yet he was lacking experience against those energy-based weaponry.

" Mage leader, abort bomb run. It's usel…" Galm 1 try to contradict the pilot bomber but was cut in her speech by her very interlocutor.

" You're not in position to give order to us. Beginning bomb run." The pilot harshly retorted for two reasons: he hated mercs, and he knew the pilot she injured at Directus.

" Mage 1, you should maybe reconsider what she said. Ustians have already dealt with RTLSs." Mage 2 intervened and began to leave the bombing run's path with some of his comrades.

" Mage 2, we will see this after we return in Lumen. All Mage aircraft, on me." Their leader ordered, and nothing, not even the emergency notices of the Ustian AWACS could make him change his mind.

Thus, the Osean began their bomb run on the Belkans RTLSs, with a low angle of pitch to drop their payload. Yet they never reached their target. The two RTLSs had open fire with all of their telescope-like turrets. But unlike the one at Solis Ortus, they only possessed light turrets. Even if they would have trouble taking heavier plane if it was the case, this allowed them to have a more numerous fire output. And as the overheated air began to ionize and create small lightnings in the wet air, the Osean strike squadron went right through hell. Only to stay in it obviously. Planes were shattered as their metallic parts were sublimated by the nanosecond pulse laser. Mage leader was one of the first to go down.

" Damn those Oseans. Zebra squadron, use your LAGMs to saturate those defenses like it was intended to." Koenig ordered, his frustration toward the recklessness of his allies could be heard within his voice.

" Zebra 1 Roger, opening fire." The Osean leader announced, as LAGMs left his pylons to be straight up intercepted. Indeed, they had bigger Osean engine than their Belkan and Ustian counterparts, which allowed them to carry more than a dozen of those anti-SAMs site missiles.

" Mage 2, 4 and 7, follow me. The other with Pixy. Prioritize hit and run missile attack, no strafing run." Iskanda inquired, hoping these Oseans who saw their brother in arms foolishly died would listen to reason.

" Mage 2, roger." The Osean quickly nodded.

The first Osean attack was just a rash one based solely on numerical advantage. This one was colder and more methodical. LAGMs rains on the Belkan position, as F-15Cs and X-29A circled around in erratic pattern while firing their missiles. Some other Mage aircraft were downed in the attack as well as one Zebra aircraft, and in total only Mage 2 and 4 were still fight-worthy, but this attack succeeded. Yet the Twin Barbicans were still standing high above the ground, high square tower with dozens of fire outputs.

But they were way thinner than the control tower of the area Wall, according to the X-37s measurements. As such, the AWACS operator quickly saw an opportunity to be exploited:

" Mage and Galm team, you're the only ones agile enough to strike at the Twin Barbicans bases. Mage, you will follow Galm as they guide you through the Belkan AA network." The AWACS operator indicated.

" Pixy, Mage 2 and 4 on me. Fly close and low. Never lose me of your sight or you're dead on the water." Galm 1 said with an imperative tone, as she dived toward the fortress.

They climb a bit from the promontory where the RTLSs once stood, reaching the level of this last Mt Ivrea peak left to conquer. Yet the Twin Barbicans were almost one kilometer later, and highly protected by a dense network of AA guns and SPKs. For the nimble X-29A it wasn't very hard to go through. As a merc, Pixy had an aircraft a bit tuned up, especially in mobility. But for the Oseans it was really hard to go in this kind of trench run. Of course, on their path they destroyed some of the most threatening defenses, but they couldn't destroy all of them.

" Galm 1 is pulling out some crazy stuff." Mage 2 commented as she raised her airbrakes right after a small AA towers to turn hard, then firing on the back of the said tower before making her head-to-tail maneuver to go back in her attack run, this making her even closer to the three Eagles trailing her, who were a bit reluctant to fly so fast in such a tight space.

" Come on, go faster people, you're making me wait." She replied, after doing another hairpin bend to her left, then another head-to-tail maneuver to arrive on the nine hours of a set of two turrets, firing one of her last missiles on it. This time when she leveled, she was really close to them, maybe less than fifty meters.

" Three hundred meters before the Twin Barbicans." The AWACS operator indicated.

" Intensify forward fire power!" The Belkan commander bellowed as he saw the four planes rushing through his last set of defenses, with the X-29A seeming to be untouched by all things his subordinates were firing at her.

" Ver. Verstärken vorwärts Feuerkraft." The servants replied.

As a consequence, the batteries fired more often, ignoring the risk of overheating. And at one point, Mage 4 was hit, and as he tried to level his plane was torn off to pieces. Yet the debris hit one the Twin Barbicans, disturbing its fire a bit, allowing the three allied fighters to come close enough to drop their ordnance. Mage 2 manage to drop three bombs on each tower, while the Galm team fired their last missiles on its base. And as the Twin Barbicans stopped firing for a bit, the Zebra squadron fired a powerful LAGM volley, which cause the two towers to explode into fire and light.

" All offensive power of the Glatisant has been neutralized. All planes, RTB. Mage 2, Zebra squadron, you're coming with us too, a Belkan last stander manage to partially blow up the runway in Lumen.'' The AWACS operator finally announced the end of this prolonged mission, which saw the loss of almost one hundred allied pilots.

" Huh? I just saw some flash at high altitude." Pixy pointed out, as he saw a turquoise blue light a bit to the North. He never saw Northern lights over Schayne plains. The only time he saw it was during a mission at the extreme North of Erusea, in the arctic circle.

" I have seen it too." His leader agreed.

" X-37s have been destroyed. Likely by energy-based weaponry." Francis announced, as the final image the space drone had transmitted was just pure turquoise blue surrounding it.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 17/05/1995, 18:20, Weather: low freezing fog.**

Again, a back travel with only seven comrades including six straight up strangers to this base and the sole survivor of his squadron wasn't very funny. They did meet a lost MiG-29As patrol of eight aircraft, but outside of this encounter that didn't last, with Iskanda and Pixy bagging two kills each, this Osean one, and the last were downed by Zebra squad's SAAMs. They had to refuel in mid-air, and with the vibration amplified by the damage they suffered, it wasn't very easy. Still, they had finally made it to Valais Air Base.

" I will have to land on that short ski slope?" The Osean asked, as he saw the two Ustian mercs lowering their gears.

" Oh, stop being some scared Frischling. Think to the men piloting the E-767 and then you'll have the right to be afraid." Iskanda retorted, as she was engaging her aircraft in the axis of the pylons preceding the runway.

" Mage 2 you're clear to land." Blaise announced to the Osean pilot who was much more used to the large runways of Wesson and Oured.

" Damned it, that's hard." The Osean said, after he touched the ground and almost slide on the recently melt ice. He tried to slow his motion but lost his cool when he realized he touch the ground with a greater velocity than the two mercs who landed at the verge of stalling. Thus, the emergency net was raised, and he was trapped in it like a fly in a spider's net. The 5 other Osean Eagle run into similar trouble to land.

After he was pulled out of his fighter, Ustian mechanics oriented him toward the briefing room. On his way there, he saw the E-767 landing without the need of the safety net. If even that kind of pilot could best them, the thirty-years-old Osean pilot had now reason to doubt of his training. Almost frozen in this climate unknown to him -he refused to do the skiing class as a kid-, he was almost a bit too much warmed by the heating system of the said briefing room. The logo of the Ustian weapon manufacturer welcome him, as an old Belkan voice he heard on the radio three days before was doing the debriefing, belonging to a man his superior had shown only disrespect for his point of view : admiral Koenig of the Ustian sixth Unit.

" The operation was a success. Glatisant has fallen as well as Lumen. The Allied Forces have broken through the Hydrian Line, bringing the battle to Belka. However, as all of you have noticed it, the X-37s space drones Osea has dispatched were shot down by an unknown energy-based weaponry. We are currently investigating this incident right now, but I have no further data on it." The admiral explained the last intel on this loss, which meant than theses X-37s weren't a good long-term solution.

" And the doctors said Halo 5 will be able to join us for the next op." The AWACS operator announced, which caused some cheering among the Ustian pilots.

Then all pilots, which were quite tired now, left for the restroom. The Osean pilot followed the motion of the people, after the admiral indicated him that he was going to stay due to the damage his aircraft sustained and a snowstorm incoming, with the latter wishing him good luck when he would have to discuss his behavior with his superiors. At least with the survivor of Claw and Zebra squadron he wasn't the only Osean in the vicinity.

For the Osean pilot with his almond eyes and slightly yellow tanned skin, this base was the opposite of all he grew up with in his country, and to a greater extent of his origin country, somewhere to the North-East of Verusa. People were drinking, chatting, and not just these energetic drinks most Osean people like, but this Belkan beverage known as Glühwein.

" Hey, don't stay in the open, you're causing drafts." A Belkan voice said, the voice of this merc he had identified by his red wing in the air.

" Yeah, come have a drink, you will have all the time to mourn your head-strong leader later." An Erusean voice speak, belonging to a merc to be sure, as she wasn't wearing a flight suit but a blood red and dark blue leather outfit. But it seemed that even his Osean comrades were a bit less strict here, having trade their uniforms for civilian clothes to ease their rest.

" Second Lieutenant Kizuko Takako. I'm pleased to meet you." The Osean shook the hand this she-merc was offering him and was a bit surprised by her strength. But after all, if she could pull high-G maneuvers without apparently batting an eye she surely had some strength.

" I think I will just stick with Kizu. You did well out there." The Galm leader judged his flying while taking a sip of hot wine.

" Compared to you I fly poorly. How did you learn to fly without any fear and such foresight?" The Osean asked after taking a seat.

" In Erusea I choose to have one more matter than in Osea or Belka." She began a slightly cryptic answer.

" Which one, indoors flying?" Pixy tried to deduce, as she was almost at ease when doing so.

" Nope, Solo Wing. White water sports, like rafting, canyoning, kayak and such. It's very good to teach you foresight, how to read the currents and the tide of a battle." She finally gave her answer, which was like with many things about her, quite surprising to say the least.

" That's unexpected. I never did such sports. But I understand your point." The Osean pilot replied, a bit downcast, having set his expectation to a somewhat crazier level, as he learned the achievement of this Erusean mercenary.

" Now I understand your cold resilience. Water in that kind of spot is usually quite cold." Pixy sighted, finally getting where this love of cold shower came from.

" I wish you good luck dealing with your top brass about your behavior of today. I mean, I'm a controversial subject since my doing at the Futuro canal." Iskanda shared a bit of empathy toward this unlucky Osean.

" Guess I'll end on Sand island. This is where they send all people that fail to comply." He advocated, crestfallen. Unlike this merc, he didn't have the luck to be backed by a fair leader. He would only be judged by unfair and greedy leaders.

This talk was for a while the main topic, with Pixy displaying what he saw once on this very island. Almost build runway and almost build base to say the least. It was the last place all pilots want to go. At least in Belka if you fail there wasn't much to complain: surviving was still considered as a minor victory. And if you fail too much and had to run, the Schwarze squadron would always take care of you. Plain and simple death arriving at three thousand kilometers per hour was the fate for Belkan deserters.

Another great topic was this energy-based weaponry that shot down those X-37s. If they saw a RTLS downing an An-225, they doubt it was the case here, as the latter aircraft was shot down at low altitude, while the drone was in space. If Belka had now the mean to get space supremacy, it would be disastrous for Osean intel or even some rumored space weaponry. But what kind of facility could have enough energy to achieve such results: in total Osea lost twelve X-37s and quite a great number of intel satellites - more than their rockets could launch-? And would they meet this energy-based weaponry on oncoming mission such as an assault on the Schayne plains?

 **Well, end of chapter. Like in the Futuro canal, I buffed up a bit Belkan defenses. But I buffed up the attacking forces too. Yet it's always better to fight at home, isn't it?**

 **And about the volcanic eruption kind of thing, I have only one thing to say: Damnit Nagase, this is how volcanic eruption look like! (Yeah because I never saw one in ac5). And Yeah, I made the assumption there're active volcanoes in Strangereal. I try to do a bit of politics with this debate, I bet it's what it could look like (#Belkadidnothingwrong).**

 **Anyways, there are some named antagonist and protagonist… Maybe they will come back later, or their name can make you deduce something for their respective future...**

 **As always, reap.. huh readers, feel free to follow, comment, subscribe...**

 **16/1/20: some grammatical fixing.**


	13. Chapter 8: Operation Dynamo

**NA: this is the last chapter following the canon story of Strangereal. After, all will change...**

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 19/05/1995, 14:00, Weather: little fog.**

Since this operation above Glatisant the base had gone a bit less noisy. With only ten pilots -eight Ustians and the two Claw squadron survivors- the number of flying personals was back to below the number of non-flying ones. Heck, even the personals onboard the AWACS were more numerous.

The Mage survivor had left the day before, with their best wish of luck. He confessed them he had a wife and daughter in Oured but was now worried about his own future. As a merc, Pixy sometimes met Osean, even if he despised most of them. Yet the few he entrusted had explained to him what could happen to the one who failed in the Osean Army : losing your rank for the light failures, and if it was worse, you were signaled as MIA and secretly forced to undergo unethical task and mission. There was no official recognition for those units, with most of them based on far away bases such as Sand Island, a cemented sandbar. The other news they were getting weren't that encouraging either. Not only the X-37s, but any scout plane that Osea or any allied country sent above the Schayne plains were always destroyed. Even the so-called uncatchable SR-71s that were once the pride of Osean intelligence were falling before Belkan defenses. But since the discovery of those F-117Z stealth anti-air platforms, the concern had shifted from energy-based weaponry to those ERAAMs spammers. Furthermore the few data obtained on those new stealth through Belkan prisoners indicated that they could possess some STOL capacities, this further shifting the interest toward a threat that seemed more dangerous for Oseans, as unlike the dagger-shaped drone and the Wesson-UFOs that went unnoticed since the Ustian onslaught on B7R, these F-117Z were something that could be vanquished and destroyed by conventional weaponry.

And now the Allied forces had now only one choice: to send scout to destroy these secondary lines of defense Belka possessed in the Schayne plains. Glatisant and the Hydrian line had maybe fallen, but as Koenig said in a prior briefing, Belka's gate would be way harder to hack than a fifth-point security door. As such, when they were called for briefing, they almost knew what their mission would be.

When they arrived in the briefing room, it was only to find a worried Koenig and a map centered on the Schayne plains. He had all the reasons in the world to be worried. After all, he was sending his forces with not very much data on the enemy they would encounter. But there never was a guarantee of coming back in war after all.

"Belka's second defensive line stretches across the Schayne plains between the Hydrian line we conquered two days ago and the Tauberg district at the North. It's North-West of B7R and at the East of Wesson. This line contains two anti-aircraft sites, with one equipped with an airfield and some squadron of interceptors. Thus, this operation will consist of ground strike and countering the Belkan interceptors. As we are near Wesson, we can expect some Oseans reinforcements. Besides, once the area will be deemed clear of Belkan threat, the allied forces that conquered Lumen will join us to go conquer Tauberg. They have been reinforced after losing some of their squadrons during operation Hell Bound, so we will have a massive armada to escort at the end of your assignment."

"Basically, they're sending us blind?" Pixy pointed out, as blue line representing the allied airborne troops was showing on the screen, on a South-North axis. To say that he was quite doubtful about the certainties of an allied victory today was the understatement of the century.

"In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed are kings." Francis added, showing his irony through some well-used proverb.

"We can see you're back in the field if you are already saying jokes. But back to what you were saying, Larry, we are going in blind. Yet the AWACS radar should be able to track most of the targets in the operational area as they announced some clear weather for today." Johnson commented, agreeing that this operation was the less prudent they ever went through.

"Anyway, be cautious up there, people. Belka has not revealed all of its Wunderwaffen." Koenig ended the briefing.

The Wunderwaffe was a Belkan concept born in the 1940-1950s war against Osea, were it began to be obvious that good fighters and good pilots could not win wars again a foe with numerical and logistical advantage. Pushed to its peak this doctrine could be set up with few words: "a handful of confident mens, and all that opposed them will be swept away". But even back in this era, in spite of the technological advancement Belka managed to obtain in the end of this war, the Belkan were themselves beat by their own concept, as the Wunderwaffe that finished this war was an atomic bomb dropped by an Osean above the main Belkan research center right in the middle of B7R. This was another reason why it was very hard to survive if you bailed out over this area, despite the radiation having dropped since then.

"Do you think Belka could use their RTLSs today?" Iskanda asked to her Belkan wingman, as they were climbing in their planes equipped for multirole missions: 4 FAEBs and six QAAMs for her and 8 UGLBs and 8 XMAA for him.

"It's what I would do if I were them. Look at how one or two of these unit jeopardize the operation Varsity and Hell Bound, and you will understand why Koenig is so worried today. He was maybe in better mood when we had to evacuate Directus, so he's not worrying for nothing I would conclude." Foulke replied, putting his helmet with ease, having maybe more than thousand hours of flight time.

"Then may Sainte Victoire watch our backs for today as we enact this second version of the Battle of Burned Plains." Iskanda emitted this comment with a little laugh.

And ten minutes later, all the aircrafts, followed by the AWACS, were on their way toward the second line of defense of Belka. They learned than a SEAD Yukte unit should met then in the Area, as well as a unit of F-2As from Wesson.

 **Schayne Plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 15:30, Weather: little cloud coverage.**

On the ground the Tau was meandering in large turns in the Schayne plains. The river was going West from the Kreuzbergsee before fusing with over rivers coming from the now Osean great lakes before flowing to the North toward the city of Tauberg, named after the river itself. Then it would go through the district of the most important city of South Belka: Blumenberg an der Tau. One hundred kilometers before the coastline of the Northern Sea, the Tau joined the Zülten who had gone through Sudentor and they would flow into the sea, going through a bit of now Osean territory for a few kilometers right before it for now the fighter pilots were just looking at its larger meanders while approaching a great lake that furnish half of the Tau's water, the very lake were the Skin Hers army Sainte Victoire was fighting three hundred years ago drowned into. The AWACS radar had already detected a few gunboats and missile boats on its surface, while its coast was guarded by eight SAMs site in the four cardinal point and the four sub-directions. They had few times before the engagement would even begin. Few times to admire a bit the landscape. Landscape comprised of a nice patchwork of small forest, small rivers converging toward the Tau, small fields of what was one of the most rural area of Belka, including vines and corns.

"Just look at the view, Galm 1. There's not so much differences between these countries from up there." Pixy commented the still quiet landscape, who would not stay that silent for long.

"I admit, South Belka has quite a good view to offer. Above all, a very nice view on a lake I will soon go fishing." Iskanda replied, flying as the same level as her wingman, even if her canards were always moving to keep her leveled. It was something necessary to have pitch stability with such an unstable fighter.

"I know dynamite fishing is forbidden, but is there some law about FAEB fishing?" Fred left a little comment, as the X-29A was diving toward the lake.

"Well there's no such law because no one fish using FAEBs." Their AWACS operator retorted, at least satisfied that the pilots were in good mood for now.

This friendly bickering lasted until the X-29A leveled up a bit before the lake, dropping an FAEB in its center. Three gunboats and two missile boats were taken by the sheer explosion, and the other could not land a hit on Iskanda's fighter due to the massive steam emission, hindering their accuracy. Pixy, the Sea Flankers and the two Mirage circled around the lake in a clockwise pattern, while the Halo squad circled in a counterclockwise pattern, with both group dealing quickly with the SAM sites using standard missiles. In the meantime, Iskanda was doing hairpin bends over the lake, evading the missiles of the last boats with ease as she kept destroying them.

"AA artillery of the lake neutralized. Proceed to destroy the airfield. J-35J Draken and Harriers incoming." Their AWACS operator warned them, as the S/VTOL craft were approaching the airspace. There was fifteen of each type.

"Fox 3" Alekseï said as he released a full volley of XMAAs. In total, the volleys of XLAAs, SAAMs and XMAAs the allied forces fired cut by a third the Belkan interceptors, with the J-35J being the main downed, as the Harriers used their VTOL capacities to evade the tracking by landing in the cover of the forest around the Tau's meanders.

"Damn, those Harriers pilots were smart. But they have bled their speed by doing so. Let's make them bleed a bit more, but literally this time." Iskanda smirked, following the path of the Tau at full speed, creating little trails over the river.

"Do not let these Ustian mercenaries get all the job done. We can fight too." Claw 1 affirmed, following the rushing Erusean merc. Both bagged some kills on the Harriers, as they were taking off from their cover, even if Galm 1 had double the amount than the Mirage pilot. Of course, he was just armed with GPBs and XAGMs, so this was understandable.

"Typhoon sighted on the runway. Twin witches, your turn." The AWACS suggested, as they still had enough XLAAs to deal with those fighters. Axe and Hammer industries were at least proud of allowing the XLAAs they were producing to lock on taxiing fighters, unlike their Belkan counterparts that considered this not to be chivalrous. But unchivalrous tactics was what made win wars since centuries.

The two F-14Ds closed their geometrical wings and glided at supersonic speed toward their target. The other aircrafts kept diminishing the numbers of Belkan interceptors, without major issues as they had nearly one technological decade of advance on the Drakens. The only with trouble was Claw 3 at one moment, when he chased a Harrier.

He was chasing the Harrier since some seconds, using his overall good low speed mobility that was defining his infiltrator. But at one moment, the pilot of the Harrier went for a very risky move: he pointed his vectored nozzles toward the ground, almost stopping his aircraft in mid-air for some seconds. He almost collided with his pursuer, but as he was above him and the centerline gun pod below the Mirage, the Belkan pilot went out of this unharmed.

Yet it was without taking account some Erusean merc that just chase a Draken that try to shake her by diving quickly. She fooled him by pitching high, then using the created instability to dive quicker than her target. And the unfortunate Belkan pilot was shot by a pair of missiles as he was leveling. It was at this moment, as she was climbing back to the engagement zone that she saw what was happening with Claw 3. He was about to be gunned down by the more mobile Harrier. So, she interrupted her climb, dived back for a bit to end up right below the Harrier. And climb right on him gun blazing, ripping off one of his side vectored nozzles and turning him into a ball of fire.

"Thanks, Galm 1"

"Go help Halo 12 and 14, you will be more useful up there." Iskanda advised him, as Mirages were not proper dogfighters.

"Only three interceptors left." Komyeta one announced, after he shot a Draken after a bit of vertical yo-yo in which the Sea Flanker came out on top, having better stability than the delta winged aircraft.

"That make one." Pixy added, after gunning one Harrier while firing a pair of missiles to a Draken that was attacking him from his two hours. By a sad turn of fate for the two Belkan piloting them their two aircraft collided with each other.

"I am on the last." Iskanda exclaimed joyfully, as she went after an AV-8B.

Again, this Harrier pilot tried to make his pursuer overshoot by using its VTOL capacities. But here the results were quite the opposite to what the other Belkan pilot get with the Mirage. He did end up flying above her. However, it was only to see her climbing vertically at full speed, before Iskanda pull out a head-to-tail maneuver and arrived right over her opponent's cockpit, gunning him like the Belkan ace she encountered over Directus "Herr Guillotin".

"Nice move, Galm 1." A voice with a very strong Yukte accent said.

"Molotok squadron has arrived on the battlefield. Protect them against enemy fighters." The AWACS warned them, as the twelve Su-32s were arriving over the lake, having come right from Directus with a mid-air refueling over Glatisant.

"Hello comrades. We have now an airfield to vanquish." Galm 1 saluted the Yuktes that fought alongside them over Solis Ortus.

"The GHQ report that they would prefer having this runway and the warehouses. Just strip it of its defenses." Their AWACS indicated, restraining a bit the destructive power they were going to use.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 15:45, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

The twin witches had managed to shoot six EF-2000 as they were taxiing but couldn't get the rest. This because a great number of SPKs were set up to protect the other Belkan fighters. And in the same time three BAWS were activated, disturbing greatly the two F-14Ds.

"Activate all anti-air defenses. Set up the SAMs in the area elf (11)." The female commander leading this place ordered. If this lady could have something, it was the respect of her enemies, as her forces were well organized. Not too far to be too stretched, but not too close to be wiped out by high radius explosive armament.

"Help is on the way, Halo squad." Molotok 2 announced, as he fired his LAGMs on the Belkan defenses, followed by his comrades, quickly saturating the SPKs.

" Luchs squadron, griff daran (attack them)!" The base commander ordered, yet with a somewhat posed voice, as the last EF-2000 had taken off. They had a snowy camo making them look like their animal eponymous name. Six were shot down on the ground, but 10 managed to get in the air

"Ver. Attacking now!" Their leader nodded.

Volleys of XLAAs were fired at the allied forces. As they were meant to be efficient against bomber, they weren't that quick at close range. Still, it was enough to take down half of the Molotok squadron. And sadly, no chute was sighted amongst its members.

" Ustian pilots, we need your support." Molotok 4 required, being pursued by two typhoons and barely evading their fire.

" Roger that. Don't move, I'm coming on you." Galm 1 exclaimed, after downing a Typhoon. He had tried to get in her six, but as he did so, she pitched high, entering into a stall that made her arrive in his six. And one QAAM was enough to take down the disengaging Belkan.

Now she was rushing toward the Strike Flanker. She didn't remember if the Molotok squadron saw her doing this maneuver, but he didn't move, using his chaff to disturb the radar of his pursuer. But they were gaining ground by the second, and soon he would have nothing more to do.

"Almost there." She said as she was only two hundred meters away from the Sukhoi. The closest EF-2000 managed to get a hit on his wing, but he was able to recover.

And tilting her aircraft, she went right between his two ailerons. Yet either they foresaw this maneuver, or they heard speaking of this maneuver by Belkan survivors, as they both fired a pair of XLAAs. To evade them, she pitched high, stalling hard, her all plane shaking, before diving toward the ground as their two foes fired a second volley. Both scattered when they saw her arriving from below. However, as she was more mobile than the Typhoons and despite him doing quite sharp turns, it wasn't long before she gunned down her prey.

"Fox 2" The second typhoon fired his missiles on her, which she evaded by rushing on the control tower of the airfield, and barrel-rolling to the left quickly on her approach. The two missiles hit the tower hard, causing some death and wounds inside of it.

Then she pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver, and evading the gun burst by flying downward a bit, before climbing right below the belly of the EF-2000 and firing her gun. Molotok 4 thought for an instant he was saved as he saw the two aircraft pursuing him getting shot down, but as he slowed down after this chase to fire his gun, a high velocity missile launched by the BAWS struck his cockpit. He wasn't the only one to go down: Claw 1 went down by this armament while in a dogfight with a Typhoon, using his infiltrator's low speed mobility to get to the tail of the enemy craft. And the Belkan weaponry took him at this very moment, as he was locking on the EF-2000.

The last BAWS was taken down by a FAEB which also destroyed its close air-to-air defenses. Obviously, she regretted destroying it a bit too late, as it had already caused quite a number of casualties.

" You fought well. Now it's time to leave. Abandon the base." The Oberst issued her last order.

"That's a first. Belkan evacuating instead of making last stands." Pixy commented what seemed to be an unorthodox order to Belkan doctrine.

"They may have their reasons to leave." The AWACS operator guessed, but one of the only things that could lead to such act was that Belka was plotting something, and do not want his soldier to be caught in their fire. This worried him deeply.

And three minutes later, a modified XB-10 Valkyrie and three MiG-31 with the same livery as the Luchs squadron took off, protected by a line of automated SPKs and SAMs. Still, two MiG-31 were downed by the LAGMs of the five Molotok survivors, as a way to get revenge for their fallen comrades.

"I'm on the leader." Galm 1 said, as she hit the burners in the hope of catching those fleeing Belkans.

Yet the leader's MiG-31, which was piloted by none other than the base commander herself, had been modified for defensive purposes while sacrificing a bit of its speed. And to be honest Iskanda was quite surprised when it launched a pair of XLAAs backward.

"You cannot run forever!" She shouted at her enemy that just launched a full volley of XLAAs, successfully disrupting the lock of the two F-15Cs in the sixth Unit.

"Ich brauche es nicht. Aber du wirst. (I won't need to. But you'll)" The MiG-31 pilot retorted, launching a final XLAAs volleys, definitively outrunning the slower X-29A. Furthermore, without those defensive missiles, its drag decreased, and it joined up with the Valkyrie containing the last Belkan survivors of this very automated base.

"Abtrennung" A Belkan onboard the XB-10 announced. This word was always associated with one thing Iskanda considered to be utterly annoying: drones.

And she was right: from the bomb-bay of the Valkyrie fell this backward swept wing dagger-shaped drone. It was her third encounter with that unknown type. Henceforth she knew what its flaws were, and quickly set in motion some schemes to bring it down.

" Galm 2, Halo 5, XMAA barrage on the UAV." She ordered, and only ''Fox 3s'' were their response.

The UAV had to resort to his forward mounted SPK to destroy those four missiles fired from long range, and that were slightly quicker than the X-29A on their final phase. The four missiles burst almost two hundred meters before their designated target. Yet all of this was just a mere ruse. The X-29A only slowed down to arrive at the good speed and with the good angle. And as she was arriving on its left, she expanded her airbrakes suddenly, pulling a hairpin bend that make her arrive on the drone's nine hours. Added a good twenty round and one sassy one-liner and it was torn into pieces despite its small size making it harder to aim.

"Try to guide the rocket another time, Hal."

"These drones have apparent weaknesses. I still don't understand why they aren't mass-produced for swarm attack, at least that way they would be efficient." Valentin analyzed this flawed drone that was maybe overengineered a bit, with two active defense system and two bays for defensive missiles. It was a good shepherd, but one that would end up eaten by the hunting wolfpack each time it was used.

"Belkan strategy, even their Wunderwaffen concept doesn't cope with drones." Koenig added, furnishing his own old Belkan point of view on UCAVs.

"We have no choice but to let their survivors run. Besides, the radar showed some MiG-29As incoming with some jammers into the mix, as well as some defensive structures between here and the second major base of the Schayne plains." Their AWACS operator indicated, as three grey area on their radar were moving toward them, and some gunboat were sighted in the meanders of the Tau river.

" Molotok and Claw survivors: engage with the ground forces. Sixth Unit, the fighters are up to you." Koenig assigned his forces, slightly chilled by the current state of the battle.

"Roger. Let's put some torque on those Fulcrums." Fred said, arming his last SAAMs on the Belkan MiG-29As with light green two-tone camo. Some grey EA-18Gs were the ones responsible of the current jamming.

"There's something wrong. Belka should send more fighters." Pixy found weird that in spite of the importance of this battle, his Homeland was not fully committed today.

"Yeah, don't be afraid." Iskanda commented, counting less than twenty aircraft, jammers and interceptors alike.

And as the planes rushed at each other's, Belka didn't seem to send more reinforcements. What are they plotting, Galm 1 mused, but she couldn't think that well during dogfights. Maybe if she could, she would have understood what was involved here.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 16:00, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

Now all were in range of each other's. The twelve MiG-29As and four Growlers outnumbering the allied fighters squadron by two to one, as well as the fluvial defenses of the Belkan army in this area against the six remaining Yukte and Osean strike crafts.

" Galm 1, engaging." She said as she rushed toward the enemy formation, almost laughing when the Belkan crafts try to take her out with SAAMs but failed.

An EA-18G fired his XMAAs on her at some point, but it didn't help a single bit: she evaded them by a single barrel-roll to the left. Then she fired back her standard missiles on the Growler. Which in spite of the jamming locked easily on the said plane, as they use IR sensors for close range. The jamming intensity decreased a bit after this aircraft exploded in mid-air, thus making the MiG-29As popping up from time to time on their radar.

Pixy went for the same target, but gunned it down from above, like a bird of prey hunting some dove. The powerful gun was enough to cut the right wing right on the folding line, and one XLAA from Halo 12 put him out of misery. But both Galm team members put themselves in harm's way as they were now in the inside of the Belkan flight, and still jammed.

Two Fulcrums quickly ganged up behind Iskanda, and began peppering her with their standard missiles, that she avoided by flying in an erratic streak of sharp turns. But she knew all those turns were diminishing her speed, despite having a highly mobile fighter. So, she did the opposite thing her opponents were expected: she extended her airbrakes while flying tilted, almost slamming herself on the Fulcrums in the process. Luckily, they both dispersed themselves, and this allow her to have a plain field of sight when she leveled her aircraft. Then she took advantage of her tuned engine and quickly got in the six of one of her pursuers. She gunned it down with chill-spinning ease, and in the same time she fired a pair of missiles on the second Fulcrums that was almost out of her firing arcs.

Pixy ended up pursued too, but he preferred using the sheer speed of his fighter than doing crazy maneuvers. He outran his opponents at a fast pace, before executing an Himmelman, this putting him in the perfect position to retaliate, that he did by firing his gun at the cockpit of his left pursuer, and a pair of missiles at the one at his right.

"Only nine aircrafts remaining." The AWACS operator indicated after Halo 7 managed to kill another jammer with a well-aimed SAAMs.

"Make that six." Halo 12 said as she fired her XLAAs, with only three missiles finding their mark due to the last jammer still flying.

She destroyed it with the help of her sister-in-arms in the second F-14D, rushing toward it and with both firing one missile on the jammer that were barely evaded. But it was only to extend their geometrical wings the second they were behind this Growler, with both of them getting in his six and firing again one missile each. This time he was unable to evade and went down. The jamming ceased, only to reveal two Fulcrums trailing them. However, they didn't last long, as the two Ustian planes that were already deep into Belkan formation shot them down.

"Four planes remaining. Finish them." The AWACS announced, and it was quickly done. Two more MiG-29As were shot down by a pair of XMAAs of Komyeta 2, and the two others by Halo 5 and seven indirectly. Indirectly because as the F-15C and F-15E engaged them head-on with missiles, they forced them to do evasive maneuvers, and those evasive maneuvers made them land right into Galm team's crosshairs, as the latter were climbing back to the engagement zone. Both last MiG-29As were gunned from below, and no chute was sighted from those very heavily damaged fighters.

In the meantime, the GPBs and LAGMs of the allied attackers had made quick work of the SAM sites, AA guns and gunboats spread around the nearby meanders. Now they only had one main target in the North-West, an anti-air base behind a hill. Besides their radar sighted no BAWS into the area this time. This mission would be history soon.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 16:15, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

The fifteen planes were already at the hill. Some Tanks and AA guns were guarding it, but they didn't last long to the GPBs of the Super Tomcats and UGLBs of the F-15Cs. Yet they were met by an helluva amount of high explosive shells from the Belkan flak.

"Fly low until sky is clear. There's nothing to conquer here. Destroy all." The AWACS operator transmitted. The warehouses were only full of ground-to-air missiles and such. They had to utterly destroy them if they didn't want that a lone shoulder-mounted SAM opening fire when the allied transports would fly above the Schayne plains.

"Roger. Dropping all." Pixy nodded, and without any mercy began his bombing run.

To the gargantuan amount of flak fire and SAMs that had welcome them they responded by an equivalent gargantuan number of rockets, unguided and guided bombs, sub-munitions and thermobaric ordnance. The plains were set ablaze, which messed up with the thermal sensors of the SAMs that survived the initial onslaught. The quick fighters were dispatching them one by one when they were not engulfed by the flames bursting of burning warehouses and containers.

"Where is the commander? What should we do?" A Belkan SAM servant asked, getting more and more desperate as their number of casualties was getting higher.

"Either's dead or he flew." Another artillery servant said, before dying due to the heavy gun the Su-32s were equipped with.

"Ihn habe ich nicht seit diesem Morgen gesehen. Er musste fliehen. (I haven't seen him since this morning. He must have fled) A third Belkan said, apparently quite angered by his commander's behavior.

"Feigling." The first one said, right before his SAM detected some kind of strange target: some kind of bomb that was hovering right beside him. Two second later he was turned into vapors and light.

"I agree your commander is a coward. Yet he will survive this day." Galm 1 pointed out, climbing after having dropped her last FAEB on some SAMs.

"Almost 90% of the Belkan defensive network is already destroyed. Keep up the good work people." The AWACS operator indicated, as the last red point on his monitor were disappearing one by one.

"So only 10% remaining. We can win this." Halo 7 added with confidence.

"I see you've worked your math, my dear humorist friend." Thesermeister said, while firing his last rockets on some containers, reducing them to a pile of rubble.

But some new unknown just added itself to the equation just now, under the form of a distress signal:

" This is Rattlesnake 3, I'm pursued by Berkuts. I won't hold much longer."

"Galm team, Halo 5 and 7, you're the fastest here. Go help him." Their AWACS operator ordered.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 16:25, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

A single F-2A Viper with a snake-like camo was trailed by 6 Berkuts with a black camo and a yellow nose. He had managed to outrun them for some time, but it was only at the expense of all of his wingmen. They were eight at the beginning and now he was alone, with only one volley of flares remaining. And flares weren't that efficient against SAAMs for obvious reasons, making his evasive maneuvers even harder than they already were.

"Don't worry, we are coming in." Halo 7 ensured the unlucky Osean, while firing two SAAMs on the Berkuts. But with their insane mobility it was very easy for them to lose the semi-active missiles. Yet this distraction was all that needed the Galm team and Halo 5 to come closer to the Su-47s.

"Krähe Schaft, griff diese alliierten Jagdflugzeug an. (Crow team attack these allied fighters)" Their Belkan leader ordered, and they left the pursuit of this useless target to attack a more potent adversary.

"Beware not to lose your cheese to some smarter enemies." Halo 5 said, as the F-2A was now out of range of the Su-47's SAAMs.

The X-29A went for a gap between two fighters in the Krähe team, flying tilted to avoid their gun fire. Then she executed a head-to-tail maneuver and fired one QAAMs on each of the two fighters that had just began to turn toward her. On the other hand, the two F-15Cs were targeted by three Su-47s, and while they were hit by some bullets, they managed to shoot two of them by using their last QAAMs. The third one succeeded in evading the high velocity missile, but this had bled his speed, and he fell to the last SAAM of Halo 7.

There was now only one Su-47, pursued by four allied fighters. The Belkan leader could keep pace with the sturdier Eagles, but the X-29A was giving him quite a lot of trouble. He could see it gaining ground with each turn she took tighter than him.

"I'm on the leader." She said as he stalled after a streak of sharp turns in which she managed to keep her speed thanks to her tuned engine. And as he was kicking his afterburners too late, she fired her gun on his cockpit, putting an end to his misery.

" It was close. If I made it to the end, drinks are on me this evening." The Osean pilot sighed, finally authorizing himself to feel some relief.

" Then I hope you'll made it." Halo 5 wished.

"Anyway, the Molotok squadron just finished the Belkan defense network. Go to the south of the area and rendezvous with the allied transports." Koenig informed them, as a huge number of blue dots was coming on their radar from the South-East and the South-West, respectively coming from Lumen and Directus, and from Wesson.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 16:35, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

Saying the Osean and Yukte transport armada was huge was the understatement of the century. It wasn't huge, it was gigantic: ten AC-130 followed by twenty C-5 Galaxy, twenty C-130 Globemaster and eight An-225. The escort squadron was more numerous than they ever saw, with fighters of various types in light or dark grey, sandy brown or grey blue two-tone camos : the Javelin squad of ten F-16C, the Paladin of ten F/A-18Cs, the Gargoyle flight of ten F-15E, the Spear squadron of twelve F-15C, the Dagger squad comprised of battle-hardened mercenary of Recta of thirteen J35J Draken, as well as the Foil squadron comprised of defectors from the Federation of Fato piloting fourteen F-14Ds along with from Yuktobania the red star squadron of 8 MiG-31 and the Zvarya squad of 12 Su-27s. And to all this they could add the Ustian pilots, and the survivors of the Molotok squadron and almost defunct Claw and Rattlesnake squadron.

From this perspective, and two thousand meters above this gigantic airborne armada, this mission seemed to be over soon. Iskanda had never seen such a massive engagement of aerial forces. If Lumen had fallen to this, there was almost no wonders that Tauberg would fall quite quickly.

"I feel like I'm queuing at some drive-in of the outskirt of Oured. I regret the simple Ustian restaurants." Iskanda said, as her HUD and radar were showing nothing but blue. If a SAM just appeared right now, she wouldn't even notice it before it fired.

"Actually, I know an Ustian restaurant with a drive-in in Oured." An Osean from the Gargoyle flight intervened.

"Yeah, That's the only good place to eat near the airbase." A Fatoan from the Foil squadron shared his mind on the low-level of Osean food for exiled pilots.

"Hem, we just need one standby exercise to be sure everything is fine, and once you'll have crossed the Schayne plains this mission will be a success." The AWACS operator transmitted. Even if he wasn't the only AWACS in the area for now, as the Yukte deployed a couple of A-50 Mainstay for covering the ground and the E-767 "Bogey Drop" of Osea.

" Roger. Spooky one to ten on standby." All pilots of AC-130s said.

"Andromeda flight one to twenty on standby." The pilots of the C-5 Galaxies indicated.

"First and second airborne battalion on stand-by." The pilots of the C-130s added.

"Galm 1 and 2 on standby." Iskanda said with a slightly nonchalant voice, already getting bored of this purely formal exercise. It was another good reason to be a merc: evade those puny rules.

"Halo squad up and running." Fred announced, not willing to use numbers to count since it would remind them of all the losses that they suffered above Directus.

"Komyeta 1 and 2 on standby." Thesermeister added, as they leveled on the same altitude than the Molotok squadron, having become good friends since the operation over Solis Ortus.

"Claw 3 ready." The sole survivor spoke.

"Rattlesnake 3 on standby." The first Osean fighter pilot confirmed its readiness, even if he had just escaped death a few minutes ago.

"Javelin one to ten on standby." The leader joyfully indicated, having had no casualties over Wesson and Lumen, and intending to keep it that way.

"Paladin one to ten on standby." Their leader said.

"Gargoyle flight ready to fight." Their leader affirmed, and this time it was a female voice for once.

"Spear squadron ready to charge." Their leader said, eager to engage any Belkan they would find on their way as they had suffered quite some casualties over Wesson, unlike Javelin squad.

"Dagger 1 tot 13 op standby." The Gebetan-Rectan mercenary leader indicated, with a strong local accent.

"Foil squadron up and running." The Fatoan renegade said, hoping their engagement here would not lead to Belkan retaliation against their homeland.

"Red star one to eight on stand-by." The Yukte squad indicated.

"Zvarya one to twelve on stand-by." The final Yukte message came.

"All right, we are halfway there. Thanks for securing this airspace, Ustians." Andromeda 5 thanked the mercs that just destroyed everything in the vicinity.

Fifty-eight transport planes escorted by nearly one hundred fighters and four electronic warfare planes were ready to take Tauberg. For the airborne troops inside the transports, the city was as won as Lumen, which fell with ease two days before.

 **Schayne plains, Belka, 19/05/1995, 16:37, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

For the pilot of Spooky five, this mission was the easiest ever thought. Their planes were covering the sky like a giant duraluminium cloud, while the jet wash of the huge formation was painting a large white line in the blue sky. Yet at some point he saw something unusual, or that could be a sign of tiredness as he didn't have that many rests since the taking of Lumen. He blinked two or three times, rubbed his eyes, but he was still seeing those broken blueish or pinkish lines in his field of sight.

" I must have ophthalmic migraine. Damn prolonged missions." The pilot complained, as those lines keep growing in number as well as their luminous intensity.

" Dude I don't think so. I'm seeing those broken lines too." His copilot sighted, feeling himself not really safe with those otherworldly kinds of lights.

"Huh, I'm seeing something flashing in the upper atmosphere. Northern lights at this latitude?" Pixy wondered, as he saw those lights that he had seen two days ago above Glatisant.

"Niet Kameraden. There cannot be Northern lights this far from the magnetic pole." Thesermeister gave a simple answer, yet that didn't satisfy him either.

"This is Bogey Drop to Eagle Eye, I'm detecting some magnetic field right in front of spooky five, at the middle of the forefront of the armada." The Osean E-767 began to see some sparks on their radar, like a jammer that was gaining in intensity with each second passing.

"Eagle Eye to Bogey Drop, we are confirming the radar anomaly. But the A-50s aren't detecting any hidden ground-based jamming system." The AWACS operator confirmed, a bit unphased by this situation in which he could not get a glimpse at what was happening.

The broken lines were not alone by now, and the flash at high altitude had gained in intensity. Everyone could see it, even with the bright sun of this day over the Schayne plains. Yet the people could see that those broken lines seemed to be linked to a central blue line, like some tree of light. And soon it wasn't just some scarce broken lines in mid-air: an entire, a gigantic column of air was beginning to turn into a light violet color, with the middle of the column in a very bright turquoise blue or turquoise green relative to the altitude. Soon Herr Thesermeister, and all pilots with a bit of physical knowledge understand what this radar anomaly was: the fourth state of matter, or plasma. The air in front of them was ionizing.

And it wasn't slow. No, it wasn't at all. From scarce broken lines of light ten seconds ago, the column was almost half a kilometer in diameter when the AWACS began to dither about the radar anomaly, and right now it was nearly one kilometer in diameter. Not enough to be as wide as the flying armada, but as the aircraft kept their forward motion, the AC-130s forming the forefront of the aerial armada were soon at only a few hundred meters of this still growing column of light. At some point the buzzing noise of the overheated and electrically overloaded air make it sound like they were in the middle of some insect nest.

They thought sometimes shit could have hit the fan, that sometimes the worst had already happened other Glatisant, or Wesson for the one that witnessed the raid of the Gault squadron and the Wesson-UFOs. But right now, shit was not even hitting the turbofan engine, but the plasmatic turbofan engine. Gigantic lightnings born of the column of plasma struck at the allied transports and fighters indiscriminately with great noise, making the thunder sounding like violent explosion. Furthermore, the forefront units began to be almost engulfed within the ionized cloud. There they would met only the most gruesome forms of death, with the transport exploding due to the heat or the phenomenal static electricity, and for the fighters death was even quicker : parts of the fighters were not just sublimated like the nanosecond pulse laser would do, but simply disintegrated, with the fighters exploding at slightly variable degree of destruction. If the airborne troops just died from the explosion, they saw some bail-outing pilots just being turned into ionized ashes by the column that had engulfed them.

And even the ones that were out of it were often met with heavy electromagnetic interference, making long and medium range radar useless. Or the unluckiest ones had numerical instability compensator failures, sending their aircraft to the ground in uncontrollable spiral of death, in which the downed fighters often hit transports in the process, this further endangering their cargo or simply taking them out with them. The state of the allied formation was just pure panic before this terrific weapon they had no means to fight.

At some point the surviving craft began to retreat, even if the order hadn't been issued officially, with the waves being filled with distress signal and screams of dying pilots or airborne troops. And while beginning to retreat they saw the inner bright blue line at the center of the column vanished. They thought they could authorize themselves some relief as the still huge formation was u-turning. But the Belkan Wunderwaffe that was firing at them wasn't going to let them rest between its firing sequence, and thus increased its power output. Henceforth a second column quickly appeared at the back of the formation in less than five second further contributing to the demise of allied forces. Furthermore, the column seemed to be growing quicker there due to the overheated vapors of their jet wash. It was followed by a third and a fourth one in the center of the formation, where it destroyed dozens of aircrafts with each second passing.

"Damn it, Rattlesnake 3 is down. Guess we won't have drinks this evening." Halo 7 pointed out with a somewhat sad voice

" How long will those columns stay in the air?" Galm 1 rhetorically asked, as she wasn't sure to obtain a response.

"Around a good ten minutes if my estimations based on the minimum ionization voltage of air. Put your radar on maximal intensity, thus you will see which area are just plasma and which aren't." Thesermeister replied, having already given this advice to his brother, and this allowed the two to survive.

"We are transmitting this order to every survivor within formation." Eagle Eye agreed with Thesermeister's physical deductions. Even if the survivors were now only a few dozen fighters and a handful of transport, as more column of plasma had appeared during this few second of chat, expanding the ionized area to a somewhat meander-like pattern, following a bit the long and large meanders of the Tau river.

"All units, the GHQ has ordered the retreat due to Belkan long range laser strike. And we don't know their range right now. Fly south and try to go back to your bases alive." The admiral Koenig admitted with great regret what this mission had turned into : a very, very stinging defeat, which if the loss kept mounting would be more costly in pilots than any battle of the war, and that any air battle of previous wars.

"Well it's about damn time." Pixy expressed his disgust about the Osean top brass that unlike Koenig didn't like to come close to the front lines. He, the Halo and Komyeta squad along with some Osean F-15Cs, Fatoan F-14Ds, Gebetan-Rectan Drakens and Yukte Flankers had survived, but for how long he couldn't know.

And with their radar set to detect the safe zone on their path, they were almost blind to any Belkan fighters that would be crazy enough to fly near these clouds of death. This very low likelihood they were fearing soon happened under the form of one well-known formation for the survivors of Wesson: an eight-plane with two others slightly behind that went through gaps between some plasma columns, and this without any casualties on their side. Yet the two behind quickly climbed at very high altitude to reduce the risk of suffering damage, as the low density at high altitude was de-facto diminishing the plasma's density.

" This is Bogey Drop, we have hostile inco…" The Osean E-767 was shot down before having the time to say anything more. The new air-to-air missile of Belka, the ERAAM had struck once more. Yet this time it wasn't carried by F-117Z that wouldn't last long in this now almost apocalyptical place due to the gigantic column of plasma still standing and being amplified from time to time, when the inner blue line of light inside of the ionized came to life again.

"Haben sie mir vermisst, meine kleine Eruseanerine Freundin? (Did you miss me, my little Erusean friend) A Yukte sounding voice she had already met and burned into her memory spoke.

"Denn come fight me, Kupchenko." She inquired, after seeing some SAAMs wreaking havoc amongst the survivors. The two Mainstay that managed to fly between the column of plasma due to their powerful radar were destroyed in an instant.

" Denn du mag nicht meine schöne Helligen Kolumne?"(So you do not like my beautiful columns of Hell) Gault one rhetorically asked, as he could feel the rage, anger, hatred and despair in her voice.

"That's an impressive technical accomplishment." Thesermeister forced himself to recognize that this time, Belkan Wunderwaffe was finally succeeding.

"I let you choose your rules last time. Now it's my time to choose. And there will be none." Gault one harshly retorted, ignoring the mind of this Yukte physicist, before rushing on his target. He knew she would evade this SAAM, but he could still try.

"Alright. Let's do this." She rushed to the fight at the same time. She managed to barrel-roll out of his guidance for the SAAM and retaliate by her final QAAM. She thought she would have him this time. But no. Flying near an ionized cloud, before enacting a head-to-tail maneuver and then a small stall by pitching high, he fooled the missile and the next second was diving on her.

"I recognize there's something good with this maneuver you showed me last time." Kupchenko calmly said, as both aircraft met, him diving and her climbing, gun blazing, but both were agile enough to evade each other's gun bursts.

"Well thanks you mein Herr. But dead men said no tales." She harshly retorted, before he let her be the pursuer for some time, but only to go back into the main engagement zone where allied forces casualties were mounting while Gault squadron was still ok. There he mercilessly gunned down five Oseans, without taking into account when they try to bail-out, all of it while evading the nimble X-29A that was closing in, but he was giving the pace here. Not her anymore like other B7R.

"I know why you hate those Oseans so much. Ich kann die Vergeltungswille verstehen." (I can understand the will of revenge.) She tried to destabilize him with his dark past, which she wasn't envying at all.

"Oh, so Koenig revealed my past? How they humiliate me after the Oured airshow of 1990 where we showed the first Berkuts to the World and that turned their F-15Cs into third zone fighters? How they paid a bunch of executioners that turned my wife into a horribly blood-stained body that even you would blink at it and make vanish my daughter? Or did he forget to tell you this bloody part of my story?" Anton Kupchenko explained with a furious voice, with the usual coolness and self-control away from him at this moment.

"Maybe he wasn't very precise on this last part." She agreed that Koenig's explanations he gave them after Operation Choker one were lacking some bits here and there. If he was truly meaning that the view of that distorted body could make her blink when few things could startle her, it meant it was really coming straight out of a horror film.

"You showed me what defeat meant. I haven't felt it seit 1990. Aber jetzt du wirst. (But soon you will feel it too.)." He kept explaining, as the two of them had climbed again above the main engagement zone, which they could saw when they tilted their aircraft to execute the sharp turns that they had to resort to evade each other.

"This is Halo 5. I can't shake him." Fred said, as Gault 8 was trailing him. And when he tried to evade his SAAMs by flying near a Helligen Kolumne, it was the time choose by the Belkan laser operators to amplify it. His F-15C was grazed a bit by the overheated plasma, with pieces of it turning into vapors and light, before it exploded and vanish.

"Halo 10 is not responding." Eagle Eye announced with a sad voice, as he saw her get locked by one ERAAM. The heavy missile turned the Super Tomcat into a cloud of tiny metallic particles without letting her any chances of survival.

"Come in, Halo 7. Come in." The AWACS worryingly repeated, but for nothing again : like his brother he tried to evade the fire of Gault squad by flying near a ionized area, but this was ignoring the fact that the Wesson-UFOs that pursued him, piloted by a girl as he could hear her laugh as she was gaining ground, had an EMP-proof cell and IR-guided missile. He lost his engine and radar due to the magnetic pulses in the area while she staid untouched, and as he consequently entered into a stall, she fired her powerful cannon at him, reducing the F-15E to a fuming debris. Halo 12 met the same end, but by the other Wesson-UFOs.

"See your defeat, Erusean." Kupchenko taunted her, as she went inverted to escape his attack, before she executed a small loop to get behind him. But he was already on his twelve by a quick Herbert Manöver, and both had to evade each other's fire again. And now their skills were equal, he had realized it at this moment. The few bits of surprise she possessed over B7R had been nullified.

And by doing her maneuver, she could do nothing but just have a glimpse on her defeated comrades, on the Fatoan and Yukte trying to swarm the less numerous Belkans. However, this futile attempt was halted when a small Helligen Kolumne appeared right where the Gault squad members were a few seconds before, as they all flew to different vectors, evading the allied forces' attacks with their highly mobile Berkuts. The swarm was utterly destroyed, and the few survivors killed relentlessly by the Gault squad members.

At least Iskanda had managed to go a bit South while dueling Kupchenko, this putting a bit further away from the Helligen Kolumne, but she didn't know if it was her achievement or his doings, so she could do nothing but watch allied death piling up.

"Verstehen Sie, Fraulein? It is not hard to bear your own sufferance but seeing the ones we care for being slaughtered without being there to help is rarely bearable." Kupchenko taunted her once more, after having let her overshoot, which she counter by doing an head-to-tail maneuver after diving below him, but he went for a quick dive and evaded her once more but without any major advancement of his own either.

"I will not stand down as your men are killing my brother in arms." She shouted, admitting that he was right. Seeing the Halo squad going down was a causing her great pain. But this great pain and stress filled her veins with adrenaline, making her ignore her own fear of death.

For this very reason, she went for a very foolish maneuver, as they were both aligned for five seconds, with him pursuing her. She pitched high with her aircraft tilted and extended her airbrakes. She managed to fly above him as he pitched down to evade collision. Her left wing almost grazed the tail of the Sukhoi. If it did hit both of them would have been forced to bail-out, and bail-out wasn't a guarantee of survival, especially with those conditions. But as his opponent was a bit puzzled for a second by this very foolish maneuver, he lost a bit of speed as she leveled, and this allow her to fire her gun at his right ailerons. The next second he dived toward the ground, losing his stability.

"Even with this little wound I can always best you." Gault leader proudly assumed the numerical superiority of his fighter other hers. He had almost double the number of instability compensator onboard, and with way better processing capacities.

"Du lost above B7R." She retorted, trying to retain a bit of self-confidence as she was forced to realize that his numerical hardware was better. He was gaining ground. Maybe this was the consequences of the few impacts she took from AA guns a bit sooner.

"There were some ifs. Not today. Guck mal an deinen Verlusten (look at your losses)." He made her see the demise of the Komyeta squad, as she turned North after evading a SAAMs. How he was managing to keep her in his line of fire while dogfighting was unbelievable to her.

"I cannot evade it." The last Fatoan F-14D was hit hard by the high caliber cannon of the Wesson-UFOs. Now he was realizing why his country fell so quickly to the might of Belka. Yet as he lost control, he almost collided with Komyeta 2. This forced the latter to do a vertical climb, and as he climbed, he ended up within the crosshairs of the other Erbe that had just taken down the last Osean transport with one ERAAMs.

"May the civilians I killed over Romney forgive me up there." Alekseï concluded his life, as he saw the powerful missile coming at him despite him still climbing at supersonic speed. This time there was no chute for him.

"In the beginning we are nothing but plasma and energy. I guess it's only a normal fate to end up in plasma and energy." Thesermeister said his last word, as the second Erbe that took down the last Fatoan shattered his two ailerons as he had barely avoided a pair of SAAMs by turning near an ionized area. And he vanished as he lost control.

And Pixy? Well his fate wasn't sealed, but it was near, at least he believed it to be. He could keep up with the slower SAAMs and could outrun the Berkuts, but not the Wesson-UFOs. Especially the one piloted by the one he identified as Cipher. His cannon torn off his right wing, making him a Solo Wing once more. But as he stalled and fell, he had a small window of fire on the forward swept-wing plane. Yet the pilot had enough reflexes to evade most of his gun burst, and only the right engine was hit. Not enough to take the sixth generation down obviously. And Pixy wasn't fight-worthy anymore.

He desperately ran for his life, going into a tight space between two Helligen Kolumne, where his radar indicated that he could went through. He was between the two when he noticed the left one being heated again. Despite having lost his wing and suffering horrible roll instability, he pushed the throttle stick to "PC max". Crushed by the sudden acceleration that brought him at Mach 2.5, he saw the small space behind him becoming overheated plasma once again.

"Herr Solo Wing might survive today. You do too." Anton Kupchenko commented the doing of her wingman that just escape a horrible death.

"There's no point for me to survive if it's not with you out of the equation." Iskanda retorted, doing a quick dive followed by a small loop to become the pursuer once more.

"Abtöten ist einfach, leben ist hart." He replied calmly, before pitching high and then using his airbrakes, flying above her before falling a bit behind, this giving him a perfect firing solution on her afterburners. They were torn by Belkan bullets and the bright pinkish flames vanish to let only black smoke.

"FEIGLING !" She bellowed, as he left the engagement zone to the North, leaving a very irritated Erusean mercenary with nothing that a very bitter taste of defeat.

" This is Eagle Eye; we have set up a refueling point above the former Wall area on Mt Ivrea." There AWACS operator indicated, as their fuel level were quite low after this heated dogfight.

"We will be back, Kupchenko!" She shouted at the retreating Gault squadron, which now had an open sky, as the Helligen Kolumne had vanished in the air.

"And I'm counting on it." He mused, having perfectly executed this first move in the only puzzle that was worth solving to him: the complete and utter destruction of the allied forces.

 **Somewhere between area Garden and Area Wall, Mt Ivrea, Belka, 19/05/1995, 17:00, Weather: heavy cloud coverage.**

The still burning wall area was fairly visible, lighting the caldera in a diffused orange light. On their way to the Glatisant, they saw the occupied Garden area. Dozens of Osean and Yukte assault and transport choppers were landed there, coming from the taken city of Lumen. They knew they would not move in a while with the terrific energy-based artillery Belka was using now.

At least their AWACS was safe. Only because they didn't push to far at the beginning of the escort, and thus had the time to turn back when the Osean E-767 hadn't. They had already set up some refueling point, yet they would notice soon it wasn't very conventional mid-air refueling. But as they were ready to explain to their forces, they were interrupted by the voice of Gault one. How he was transmitting was not a mystery if they had a constellation of reflector satellites.

" I think your Eagle Eye hadn't an eagle eyesight. Or he would have notice something above him." He announced, smirking in his Su-47 cockpit, hundreds of kilometers away from them, but holding their life in his hand.

An Helligen Kolumne began to grow at the left of the E-767. Both pilot and copilot tried to turn the best they could, using every flight control surfaces: flaps, ailerons, even the spoilers. But the AWACS was too slow and had a turning radius too great to evade entirely the Belkan Wunderwaffe. As such the left wingtips grazed the ionized area and was utterly melt. The fuel in it exploded right away, shaking the plane hard, and it now the E-767 engulfed in black smoke was falling toward the North of the Wall area.

"Everyone, abandon ship." Koenig ordered, as he left his seat with haste to grab a chute.

"But sir, we are at 7.5 kilometers and we haven't the time to get into stratospheric gear?" Johnson pointed out, only to be interrupted by a very, very worried Admiral that pushed the emergency door above the left wing.

"I prefer to suffer hypoxia or hypothermia than hyperthermia because we fell into plasma. Now jump oder I throw you out of the plane, Phil!" His admiral harshly retorted, despite the fear of dying that was slowly freezing his veins, and the cold external temperature wasn't helping.

" You may fire when ready, commander." Kupchenko sealed the fate of their AWACS. The lose E-767 flew right into a growing Helligen Kolumne, and was disintegrated as the area turn pinkish, highlighting the black clouds that were covering Mt Ivrea.

" They are gone." Pixy could just say, as the Helligen Kolumne began to vanish. No one could survive the wrath of such weaponry.

" This is Espada squad, we are here to refuel you. Sending our position." The Sapin voice they already heard above Futuro canal spoke.

"Did you bring a tanker?" Iskanda asked, now with her neutral voice back, unable to feel anything after witnessing such death while being so powerless against the Belkan Wunderwaffe.

" I am the tanker." Espada 2 replied, as their position was now on their HUD. It was over the valley that joined the Wall and Gate area.

"What? I don't understand?" Iskanda wondered how they would refuel.

"I get it. It's quite dangerous but compared to flying between two Helligen Kolumne it's nothing." Pixy now understood what Espada 2's Rafale M was equipped with, and as such why its cross section was bigger than the standard Rafale Ms.

 **Glatisant, Belka, 19/05/1995, 17:10, Weather: heavy cloud.**

Iskanda was now seeing the Sapin craft. Pixy had agreed to let her refuel first, as her X-29A hadn't as much fuel capacity than his F-15C. Besides refueling with a broken wing and thus terrific roll instability would be a tremendous exercise. The Rafale M was bearing four tanks in place of his usual LASMs or SODs, along with a boom for air refueling. In other time she would just have some receptacle for the Rafale Ms of the Sapin Navy, but the X-29A and F-15C hadn't the same refueling system than the Rafales.

" Basically, instead of going to the pump I'm just syphoning you." Iskanda shared her mind on this unorthodox method for mid-air refueling, trying to best her mood a bit.

" Let's say I'm letting you feed on a jerrican." Espada 2 replied and was about to laugh but didn't laugh at all when she saw a massive light coming from the Garden area. The Belkan strike had surely utterly destroyed the parked allied choppers there.

" If mid-air refueling is aiming at a needle, this one is going through the eye of the needle." Iskanda kept moving forward, having to do with the low visibility.

" A bit higher... now yaw a bit… left… a bit right… that's it. You're connected." Vasquez announced confidently as the X-29A was linked to her boom, after spending nearly a minute guiding her as she was looking at Galm 1's craft through some added cam.

"I thought I was going to end up out of fuel over Glatisant. It was hot." Iskanda said, rubbing her now sweated foreskin due to the stress she just felt.

Five minutes later her tanks were refueled, with enough fuel to go back to Valais. Pixy was still wondering if he could maybe land in Lumen or Directus, which had way bigger runway than Valais Air Base, and thus would be easy for him to land.

"I think this answer your thoughts about refueling here or later." Espada 1 said, as a streak of blue lights flashed at the South-East, were Lumen was positioned.

"If they can hit Lumen with that, I doubt Directus is safe. I will have to refuel now." Pixy agreed, crestfallen that all the transports and fighters landed on their airports were surely being taken out by the Belkan long range Wunderwaffe.

" But how will you maintain your course with one wing missing?" Espada 2 asked, quite worried that the refueling would end badly.

" I will support him. That's what wing mates are for, supporting each other, right?" Iskanda promised, leveling right on Pixy's craft.

"I wouldn't trust anyone to do this. But I guess since you're the only ones that survived Belkan Helligen Kolumne you can do it." Espada 1 expressed his concerns about their scheme.

The X-29A went a bit below the Eagle, and the next second, Iskanda's left wing was pushing on what was left of Pixy's right wing, allowing him to have a bit of stability for some time. Yet keeping the pace decimeters by decimeters to move forward until the Rafale M, and with two aircraft with disparate thrust to weight ratio was going to be as hard as flying into the Glatisant to say the least. At more than one instant they thought one would stall and send the two of them spiraling toward the ground and ultimately to their death.

But in the end, they succeeded. And Pixy manage to connect to the Rafale M's boom, even if all three aircraft were dramatically vibrating.

" This is it. Aircraft refueled. You have to head to Valais Air Base." Espada 2 transmitted them, while disconnecting her aircraft and going for a South vector.

"I guess Kupchenko's Wunderwaffe melted the new Directus International Airport?" Iskanda rhetorically asked, expecting such move from this guy. That's what she would do in the first place.

" You're right. Everything that was on the ground, the warehouses are just melted metals now." Espada 1 confirmed, as the X-29A and F-15C were cautiously separating themselves and going on a more Eastern-oriented route.

" I hope there was not too much Ustian casualties there." Pixy wished these strikes could be at least not a civilian bloodshed.

" Anyway, see you again, signor and signora mercenarios." The Sapin leader cut the talk to evade being tracked by the Belkan Wunderwaffe.

And now only two lone mercenaries were making their way back to Valais. If Kupchenko wanted to make them taste the bitter flavor of defeat, everyone could agree he succeeded in his schemes. More than one hundred allied pilots had died today.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 19/05/1995, 17:40, Weather: freezing fog.**

Even the weather over Valais was unfriendly to them today. But at least being that far, and under heavy lead-colored cloud could maybe protect them a bit from the Belkan long range laser strike. To be honest Iskanda had never figured out that laser could be used for creating those Helligen Kolumne. Has someone talk to her about evading laser strikes, she would have expected having to dodge beams of light falling from the sky. But there were big disparities between some sci-fi space battle station and real life. However, she had found this real-life version of laser strikes to be way more frightening than anything she was ever submitted to.

" Galm team, you are clear to land. Iskanda first, Pixy, we are preparing the safety net for you." Henri Blaise welcome the two sole survivors of the Ustian sixth Unit.

" It's not like we are the only ones coming back." Iskanda went full-on sarcastic as a way to best her mood a bit.

Her landing was a tough one, but not as much as Pixy's. He thought he wouldn't need the safety net and began to descend toward the runway, but his lost right wing betrayed him at low altitude, due to the turbulences in mountain air currents. Thus, his aircraft almost crash-landed if it wasn't for the net of cables that caught him on time. It was a crestfallen mercenary that exited the cockpit, telling the mechanics to paint the new wing in red too.

"It was a nightmare. We lost so many people today." He thought, realizing that he would surely need more than one life to live with the burden of the survivors.

The debriefing was made in an almost funeral aura. Both were quiet as tomb as an Osean major did the debriefing. Iskanda instantaneously recognized the major Perrault she had met four days before in Directus. He had managed to flee Directus International Airport before the attack with the Abweichler and some high-ranking Belkan pilots as POW, having assumed they could know something about the Belkan Wunderwaffe. For him it was strange to use this Axe and Hammer software, and as such he only used the mapping system to display the Schayne plains, and not the three-dimensional projection of the mission advancement Johnson would usually display after the mission. But maybe they needed the AWACS data to use it, and as such it was understandable why it wasn't available right now.

" First objectives of destroying the Belkan second line of defense have been reached. However, the Belkan laser artillery caused tremendous amounts of allied casualties. There is no way we can see this as even a pyrrhic victory. It is only a disaster."

Then he zoomed out and using a bit of the few functionalities he could understand in this software, he drew a circle centered around Tauberg. This circle was large enough to include Lumen, Directus, Wesson and the majority of the great Lakes, Sudentor, Hoffnung, Anfang, Mund, Blumenberg, some parts of Gebet, Recta and Fato but without major cities there. Almost one thousand kilometers of diameter. Hopefully Valais Air Base was out of it, apparently.

"Furthermore, the Belkan didn't stop their strikes to our only airborne armada." Perrault kept explaining the gargantuan amount of losses the Belkan had inflicted today. " The occupied Airport of Lumen, the International Airport of Directus, the newly re-established base of Wesson and the Yukte-Osean fifth fleet along with the entire squadron of twenty A-325s Sea Cossacks -a seaplane transport developed from the An-225 and made for amphibious operations- that were parked in the great Lakes have all suffered heavy damage. The entire fleet is lost, with the Lion and Minsk Battleship, and five aircraft carriers. Loss are mounting to more than one thousand pilots on all fronts and maybe more than ten thousand military losses, if we considered both sailors and soldiers. Almost a fifth of our navy and a sixth of our aerial power are out of the equation in matter of assets. Civilian losses are not to be enumerated, as those strikes have been focused solely on military targets." He ended up the briefing, having almost become deadpan due to the huge - no, gargantuan was definitively a better fitting name- number of losses the allied forces suffered today. All transports had been halted, and they had retreated all military assets to the bases of Futuro canal and inner Osean bases.

"But Herr Abweichler has some intel to share about the strikes we suffered. This has already been transmitted to all allied bases, squadron and carriers."

"Danke to let me intervene. What struck the allied forces today was a chemical laser built under the codename "Excalibur". It was intended to be an ICBM counter, but it seems the Belkan have modified it since. It's the main achievement of project Pendragon led by Sturmbannführer Anton Kupchenko, along with the ADFX-01 Morgans -the true designation of what you keep calling "Wesson-UFOs". But I honestly don't know much about the project that any other Belkan soldier. I cannot give any more intel about it for this reason." Hervin explained the Belkan Wunderwaffe that attacked today with deadly and dreadful results.

" As such we have brought some prisoners here. Maybe you can help interrogate them a bit, mercenary Rayien, since you already showed some intimidation tactics." Orson proposed, not really gifted in these ways. After all he was just supposed to be an Osean consultant sent in Directus to help with the Ustian lack of high-ranking officials.

" I think I will accept this offer. Tomorrow afternoon seemed a good time to me, and I have already thought about this likelihood on my way back. In the end they will realize they should have let me kill them above Directus." She agreed to help question those Belkans, her lips turned into a distorted mad happy smile that could mean her last assumption was dead serious.

"I will just remind you that torture is forbidden here." The Osean recalled, afraid of what this merc would use to make the Belkan talk.

"Of course. See you tomorrow." She finished this conversation and headed with Pixy to the restroom. There they intended to drown their sorrow and pain into alcohol and were joined by the Abweichler as he thought Koenig had surely died today but the waiters refused to serve them after the third beer.

"To the Ustian martyrs. Since they thought over the Schayne plains, I guess they are now marching alongside Sainte Victoire." Hervin solemnly raised a glass of water since they stop providing them with alcohol.

"Martyrs never win wars by themselves, but they usually inspired other in their will of Victory." Pixy commented, trying to detach himself from his grief by a bit of philosophical flights.

"They never won wars solely. But survivors do. And us, the Ustian who survived will!" Iskanda raised her glass too, trying to feel a bit more confident. This feeling had vanished from her since they had to shamefully retreat from the Schayne plains.

At least the radio speaker provided them with a bit of laugh:

" This is Ufree Fm broadcasting from Directus International Airport, where firefighters are still containing the fire." The special envoy began his speech, and was interrupted by another speaker that found good to laugh about this:

" Damned it, Belkans. Next time you organize an international sound and light spectacle, warn us."

The following night wasn't very good for both mercs. Both had nightmares where they were seeing their killed brother in arms coming back to life under the form of heavily burned body that make look like Darth Vader only got a few sunburns in comparison. Suffering from insomnia due to the apocalyptical conditions they survived today, Iskanda began thinking to more and more mad schemes to make talk the Belkans. It would not be extraordinary question like in the middle-age, but something quite close. They would suffer like Kupchenko made her mentally suffered today.

 **End of chapter.**

 **Maybe the Belkan bases will seemed not that hard to destroy, but they were merely a trap. I sometimes found weird that the name for this mission is Operation dynamo, which is the name for the marine evacuation of Dunkerque, while it spotted more common event with the 1915 Gallipoli naval campaign for example. By the way, the idiom "** **Helligen Kolumne** **" is a reference to some revolutionary unit that fought during the Vendean counter-revolution during the 1789-1799 revolution, under The Terror, and with deadly and dreadful results...**

 **So yeah Excalibur struck hard. And I try to make the laser strike more realistic, physically speaking, as a giant laser would ionize the air undoubtedly. Why it didn't strike earlier? There were not as much concentrated troops as there was now. Eagle Eye is gone, but are they truly dead? Will our Heroes prevail? (Are they even Heroes to begin with?). Those are question for now and way later.**

 **Bis nächst mal, Readers, and feel free to review, favor, express your mind on this modified dynamo operation.**

 **21/1/20 : fixing** **some grammatical mistakes…**


	14. Tempête sous un crâne

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 20/05/1995, 10:00, Weather: light fog.**

She had still two hours before lunch and the questioning of the Belkan pilot. So, she asked to Pixy to recall her how Directus fell. Maybe as such he would be able to detach himself from that dreadful day. He wasn't mourning anymore, but surely needed to share how this war started for him. A war that had already changed many things for him, and would keep changing many other things, and just not for him. Besides, she had agreed to confess a small part of her backstory, even if she had specified that this very chapter wasn't as bloody as the first one. It was at a point where she was at a crossroad of destinies. She had so much choices that day and chose one. One that could have let on a peaceful path if she kept walking in it, far away from all of this violence and hatred. But Pixy insisted that he would speak first, and he began recalling the circumstances that led to the fall of Directus.

"Laura and I have just been recruited by Ustio for three days. We arrived on 11th March. Ustio's forces have already been depleted by unsuccessful raids on Glatisant and B7R. Maybe those F-117Z were responsible for those drawbacks, but I guess the Belkans won't tell us this. Only the Halo squad and the Komyeta team were still intact, as well as the airport."

 **Directus International Airport, Ustio, 15/03/1995, 16:00, Weather: high stratus.**

"Osean Intelligence Satellites have sighted the Belkan invaders at 15:30 taking off from the Schayne plains but could not confirm their numbers. We can expect mainly fighters, and maybe some bombers that will attack our main defenses such as those around the airport, or the SAMs sites." The admiral Koenig they only met yesterday was making the briefing, with a map centered on Directus. But this map was also showing the Belkan raids on the lake near Wesson.

"At least, the Osean defenses near Wesson are keeping them busy. Otherwise we would have the entire Belkan Air Force banging on our door. Be ready for anything today, from Belka sending Frischling on first line to high-tech ace squadron. Any questions, pilots? Kein? Gut."

On their way to the hangar, Laura and Pixy were chatting quite friendly, maybe a bit further than friendly. Still, friendly chatting could not keep them from the main subject of interest:

"You won't be disturbed when attacking other Belkans, will you?" Her leader asked with a confident voice. She was the oldest merc among the team, and thus had already fought her countrymen.

"Well, we have fought Yuktes, Eruseans, some Shilagean guys, quite a variety of mercs from other countries so far. I will not be scared by my countrymen." Pixy answered with a similar set of confidence, ready to climb in his F-15C. She chose a F-15C after her aircraft suffered too much damage from a dogfight against a Shilagean renegade ace when they fought alongside Voslage, Belarus and Shilage. After all, this man they fought wasn't very different from them, fighting his own countrymen for the acquisition of power, wealth and fame. With the main exception that unlike this man they weren't castaways with scars of the past.

"They will see the power of Galm team. And since we are fighting over Directus, may Ste Victoire watch over us." She wished him good luck, even if they wouldn't need it. They didn't need it over Romney, and not over Erusea. Skill was always better than dumb luck, and they both possessed quite good sets of skills. Victory seemed achievable to the both of them at this moment.

And a few minutes later, all that was left of the Ustian Air Force was in the air. From all six Units, only the sixth survived. All former Belkan pilots that had chosen to stay in Ustio after the secession were already gone over Mt Ivrea and B7R, having being killed by the local defensive squadron or reinforcements, with some of their opponent being the Belkan pilots that had chosen to go back to Belka. Former units that the secession shattered had been reunited on the battlefield, but with members on different sides. The Halo squad was maybe the greatest Ustio had ever seen, comprised of F-14Ds, F-15Cs and F-15Es, but they were manned by young pilots, eager to fight for the freedom of Ustio, but this left them quite susceptible to death a bit quicker than battle-hardened mercenaries. Speaking of mercenaries, they weren't alone. Two Su-33s were with them today.

"This is the AWACS Eagle Eye. I will relay all orders to you. Be ready and be brave, folks." The operator indicated, as they had reached their operational ceiling.

"Galm 1 and 2 rogers." The mercenaries agreed. They had been given some fitting squad numbers, as their designation was now the 666th squadron, for the 66th aerial battalion of the six Air Unit. Pixy did point out that there weren't sixty-six aerial battalions, not even sixty or twenty but just a handful of them in the Ustian Air Force. But to Laura's taste, the number was fitting enough, due to the demonic beast that she chose as their common emblem, on a pitch-black color with two white stars behind it.

"Komyeta team ready." A Yukte-sounding voice added.

"Halo 1 to 30 on standby." The young Ustian leader indicated, even if the planes with number above twenty only said 2-5 instead of 25 to gain some time.

"It's hard to believe that you lost with so many troops." Iskanda cut him as he was recalling his story.

"Many of them were still younglings. The battle of Directus was just a hail Mary for the Ustian Air Force." Pixy commented sadly, before going back to his story.

 **Directus, Ustio, 15/03/1995, 16:30, Weather: light stratus.**

"We have four Bm-335s on a vector of approach to the airport. Escorted by F-5Es and MiG-21s." Eagle Eye announced, as most Ustian fighters were hovering around the city itself.

"This is Halo 6, engaging." One Ustian pilot indicated from his F-15C.

In total, four Lindwurm were sighted, with ten F-5Es and Fishbed escorting them. Both didn't come with long-range weaponry but were nimble enough to evade their opponent's. They were a good thirty kilometers away from the airport. Still, it would need only one to destroy the lighter defenses that could take the bombers down by themselves, but not quickly enough, and not with their escort.

A couple of minutes later, they were both approaching the Lindwurm formation. But in the meantime, two other bomber formations had been sighted. The Halo squad was forced to split up in three, losing his sole numerical advantage. They both fired volleys of XMAAs that reduced the Belkan bombers to flying wreckage, as the Ustian decided to lock on to the enemy fighters.

"Half of the squadron attacking the airport is down. Keep up the good work." Eagle Eye observed the mitigated results from the volleys of XLAAs, XMAAs and SAAMs the Halo squad were armed with.

"Yes, they are doing great work, but without reinforcements from Osea or Sapin we are doomed to flag of fail." Koenig didn't share the confidence of his operator. He knew this battle wasn't going to end well. The Belkan escorts that weren't shot down were now rushing on the Ustian interceptors.

"F-5Es are too agile at close range. I have one on my tail." Halo seventeen complained. By luck only some bullets hit his F-14D. Enough to hamper his movements, but not too much.

But soon the F-5E trailing him went for something more dangerous, firing a QAAM. He saw the high velocity missile gaining ground despite his evasive maneuvers, and was ready to pull the ejection handle, but instead of a big explosion he only heard a bit of gunfire. One F-15C with dark wing and red fuselage had jumped into the furball and successfully gunned down the QAAM hot on his tail.

" You need to keep your energy, young one." Galm 1 commented his flying, while firing one of her QAAM to the Tiger II. And this Belkan had no friendly to intercept it, so he died pretty quickly.

"Do not pursue them too much. Stay strong and united." Pixy gave another advice as he executed a sharp double turn to get in the six of the F-5E that was trying to lock either him or his flight lead. The smaller fighter met his end with a pair of standard missiles.

"Let's show those Belkans how good we really are!" Halo 10 said, flying in her F-14D, alongside the number 11 and 12, eager to fight as two F-15Es went down. They were defending against the third Lindwurm group. Furthermore, with the two mercenary squadron already mixed up with the other pilots against the two other bombers, these Halo squad members were put in greater risks than in any place on this battlefield.

She went back in the furball and fired some XLAAs that the Belkan F-5Es had not that much trouble evading them. They did not have that much trouble getting in her six, but as she closed her geometrical wings, they had trouble keeping her in range of their standard missiles and QAAMs. This gave the two other Super Tomcats pilots that were overseeing her a perfect target for their XLAAs. Five F-5E fell to this attack, and the ones that were slowed down as they successfully evaded the XLAAs went down by the fire of some QAAMs from the Eagles of this defensive sector.

And in the third sector, it was where the Komyeta team was working hard to keep their brother-in-arms alive. They had suffered some losses as the cannon of a loose Bm-335 that had crashed into a forest manage to fire some gun burst from below, before a well-aimed SAAMs from some F-15E -Halo 7 to be precise- destroyed it. There, the Belkan had even some F-16C in their forces. They weren't as fast as the Tomcats or the Eagles, but their small size allowed them to easily dodge their missiles, especially the ones with long range but poor mobility. Squeezing through the Ustian squadron, they were slowly shooting down Halo squad members one by one, attacking pilots at the edges of the defensive formation.

But soon the Ustian pilots realized the battle tactics their enemy were using, and lured them in. Letting some aircrafts flew a bit further than the defensive line, they attracted the Belkan attackers. When the trap unfolded, it was too late for the Belkans. Even if they bagged some hits on the Ustian fighters, the SAAMs bore by the F-15Es that were the most numerous fighters of this Halo squad group in the vicinity made quick work of them.

Of course, the Belkan had inflicted them losses in their fierce attack and some defenses of the airport were now only burning piles of scrapped metal. But this only pushed the Ustian defenders to counterattack even fiercer, flying better than usual for the ones that survived the initial onslaught.

"Maybe we can end this on a draw and the Osean reinforcements will help us to draw them back to the Glatisant!" One Ustian pilot proposed in the heat of the battle, as he killed two Belkan planes in one shot, with the first aircraft he gunned down losing control and hitting another that was evading the gunfire of the Galm team.

"Good shot Kind (Kid). But don't get too cocky, the Belkan are usually cunning warriors." Galm 1 replied with a voice somewhat rejoiced that these new Ustian pilots were proving themselves to be good enough against the ones that had shot down their elders.

"Belka won't just send one wave. We have to hold until reinforcements." Koenig recalled through the AWACS, with the few messages he was getting from Wesson and other battles being not very good ones. He was afraid the Osean forces would come too late.

But right now, the Ustian were making steady progress, sanitizing the air with casualties below the Belkan ones for once. At least unlike battles over Osean territory the exchange ratio wasn't against the defenders. And at this moment, as he was gunning down the last Belkan F-5E of his sector, Pixy thought they could win this.

"I guess you were wrong for once, Larry." Iskanda interrupted his story, finding this battle a bit too annoying as it was almost an even one.

"Ich war so falsch dieses Tag (I was so wrong that day). And the Belkan reinforcements were something worse than I ever met until Excalibur yesterday." Pixy acknowledged his mistakes of the past and was ready to make amend of it to have a brighter future. Even if the brightness would only come from overheated and electrically overloaded air.

And like many things, it simply began with a message of the AWACS:

"Eagle Eye to all, we have some unidentified jammer aircraft, approaching from the same vector than the Bm-335s. Stay in this formation. Looking like some flying wings on the scope, but definitely not B-2As." The AWACS disturbed the almost peace that had returned since the last Belkan fighter went down.

Galm 1 and 2 kicked the burners and were joined up by other Halo squad members. They quickly arrived on the Belkan unknowns and were utterly surprised to say the least. But a missile incoming alert suppressed quickly their surprise. Two flying wings were gliding toward the airport. They were smaller than B-2As, almost half its length. But what surprised them the most was their deep dark color. It was even darker than pitch black.

"I thought the B-2A was an Osean bomber?" Iskanda interrupted once again, even if since she saw the F-117Z she doubted that Belka would not have the blueprints of those stealth.

"Belka never get their hand on it, unlike the Nighthawk. But these were Dunkle Wing. DW-1s to be short." Pixy explained and began to describe those DW-1s.

They were indeed flying wings, but with their wings in a tighter angle than the B-2A's. Of course, it would decrease their stealth, but it wasn't for this capability that this airplane was created. Otherwise it would not bear four engine in its main body and great vertical sharklets to give it better mobility, with a hemispheric glass cockpit on top of it with two set of targeting systems flanking it and one back cockpit between its exhaust equipped with one SPK. At the beginning they fought it was some Belkan answer to the Osean AC-130s. Maybe it was intended to be, but then a volley of four SAAMs was fired from bays positioned between the two sets of air inputs, below the cockpit.

"All aircrafts, evade. Try to circle around it, or attack from its sides." The AWACS operator suggested, as the casualties were mounting again.

And to had this to this frightening description, the external side of the ailerons were housing supports for its heavy ECM system, rending all attack from the side pretty difficult. Furthermore, more defensive firepower was coming from small bays positioned on each upper side of the plane, between the sharklets and the set of air inputs that were used to fire standard missiles. A four-man crew was enough to pilot it and used it with great efficiency. Against this the Ustian fell short literally and realistically.

"Saturate them from behind. It's too dangerous head-on. Galm 2 conceded, as he was unable to get even a QAAM lock from the front due to the DW-1's armament being mainly forward-oriented.

"Roger. This is Halo 5, opening fire." The Ustian pilot said, followed by some others.

The quick rounds fired by the SPKs intercepted some missiles, but not all of them. One by one, the DW-1s were crippled to death. Yet they had crippled the Ustian squadrons too. From twenty-four survivors after the Lindwurm attack these six flying wings left only seventeen survivors. Directus' airspace was slowly getting loose from their grasp, away from their forces.

"And why haven't these DW-1s been sighted since?" Iskanda wondered, having not even heard about them.

"Because the vast majority was used in the first attack against Wesson, where the Osean Death Stars destroyed them. For once their Vantablack camo didn't help them but was a hindrance, since it's meant to absorb all light, making them perfect planes for night attacks, but the worst one to attack planes with defensive energy-based weaponry." Pixy revealed the true nature of their dark camo.

"And later Wesson fell to the ADFX-01s." Iskanda recalled, before letting Pixy continue with his story.

 **Directus, Ustio, 15/03/1995, 16:45, Weather: high stratus.**

The Osean reinforcements weren't coming. And to make matter worse, another flight of DW-1s escorting some Bm-335T assault craft were heading toward the airport. The Ustian admiral hadn't many choices left. There was no point in doing last stands in the hope of now useless reinforcements. Directus was lost. He was opposed to scorched earth policies, but this time they had no other means of delaying the Belkan advance further into Ustian territories. Even if cities like Solis Ortus wouldn't last long due to the lack of runway disabling fighter presence there.

"This is the admiral Koenig of the Sixth Ustian Unit to all Ustian and mercenary aircrafts. Order has been given to destroy the runway of the airport by all means. Make them crash on it if necessary." He asked his forces to sacrifice the facilities there to slow down the Belkan invasion schemes.

"Well, we will finally use those bombs you choose to make us carry, leader." Galm 2 said, as he evaded a pair of SAAMs from the DW-1s. The missiles he fired impacted on a warehouse while his bombs hit the center of the runway. Behind him the rockets of the Su-33 duo destroyed sporadically its surface, creating dozens of holes in the concrete. Some F-15E dropped their GPBs on it, using the piercing ability of this kind of armament to further damage the runway. But many of them fall to the volleys of SAAMs the three DW-1s fired. Some chutes were sighted, with pilots aiming their aircraft on the runway before bailing-out.

The Bm-335Ts began to turn away from their target, as it was useless now. But the remaining F-14Ds that didn't take air-to-ground munitions decided to attack them at this very moment. Four Belkan planes fall burning toward the airport, further damaging its runway once more.

Yet the Belkan hadn't lost their fighting force. Even if one DW-1s fell to the RCLs of the Komyeta squad that saturated its defensive armament and turned their engines to piles of metallic wreckage, but without suffering quite some hits from the defensive armament. Even if the SPK wasn't conceived as an anti-aircraft gun, it could still hurt them in quite a nasty manner One other fell to four QAAMs launched on its cockpit by the Galm team, even if it was their lasts. But the last took three Eagles with him, either the C or E variant, along with Halo 11. Now only Halo 3,5,7 to 10, 12, 16, 2-2 and 2-3 were still flying, along with the two mercenary squadrons.

But it wasn't the last of the nastiest surprise the Belkans had still in their arsenal. One rear gun of one Bm-335Ts had survived the crash and hit Pixy hard as he was dropping his last bomb on the crashed aircraft. Of course, the improvised AA battery was turned into vapors and light, but Pixy suffered a great amount of damage from it. And he suffered even more the second right after he climbed, having to evade a SAAM coming from nowhere apparently. The great mechanical stress put on his damaged red wing ripped it off from the main body.

"You're once more a Solo Wing, Pixy." His leader joyfully laughed about his demise. It had already happened once over Erusea. Not it was the third time, but always on the same side.

" Lache, es ist sehr lustig."(laugh, it's very funny.) Pixy nodded, as he was almost used to this, and could keep a somewhat good level of stability despite having lost half of his lift.

"We have Su-47 incoming on radar. It's not the Gault team." The AWACS warned, as other SAAMs took down Halo 3, 9 and 2-3 respectively.

"All planes that cannot fight, head to Valais. The rest will delay the enemy fighters. We have ten Osean Hornets incoming, ETA twelve minutes." The AWACS added, as the Su-47 were now fairly visible, harboring an Adder symbol as well as a dark snakeskin-like camo, made of little scales separated by blood. It was for sure an attack squadron.

"Grabacr Schaft, let's finish those Ustians." A thirty-years-old Belkan voice spoke. A voice Pixy had already heard, but he didn't remember when. That he would identify nearly two month later with Maggie during this tour of the museum.

"This is the infamous Ashley Bernitz that you swore to kill I guess?" Iskanda wondered, as Maggie recalled to her his sudden burst of anger when learning about this pilot's identity.

"Indeed. Now I'm describing only what I saw from some civilian that recorded her last moments." Pixy answered his question with a slightly sadder voice than usual. Seeing her demise had been quite painful to him. But it only made his determination to end Ashley's life stronger.

Halo 5, 7, 10, 12, the two su-33s and Pixy were forced to leave the area. Pixy was heartbroken, as he couldn't help his flight lead. This left only Halo 8, 9, 16, 2-2 and 2-3 along with Galm 1 to deal with the Berkuts. And despite how good the Belkan defectors that had chosen to stay within Ustio had trained the Halo squad, casualties grow again quickly. It was difficult to dogfight against very mobile prototypes when flying in highly stable crafts. Furthermore, most of them had no more air-to-air weaponry outside their standard missiles and gun.

"This is 2-3. I'm hit. Gottverdammt." An Ustian pilot swore, as two Su-47 had ganged up on him in order to shoot it down. One of his pursuers fell to Galm 1's gun, while she fired a pair of missiles to the other. Sadly, another Berkut fired a SAAM at her at this very moment, and the one she was aiming at managed to evade her fire. And Halo 2-3 went down.

After a great acceleration, a Split-S and some sharp turns, she managed to attack head-on those two Berkuts, one with gun and one with missiles. But even if she evaded well their missiles by a tight barrel-roll to the left, she couldn't evade all of their gunfire. A few bullets grazed her, and some hit her aircraft.

In the meantime, Halo 2-2 and Halo 16 had gone down. Now there was only three against nine. She had fought with worse ratio, but with better wingmen. These two were good, maybe above average. But not good enough to evade better pilots and better aircrafts.

" This is Halo 8; I can't evade them all. Ejection!" He was forced to bail out after a precise gun burst of Grabacr 6. By luck the debris of his plane explosion caused his pursuer's demise, when small metallic part got sucked into his engines.

"Nur zwei." Grabacr leader proudly announced and began trailing the F-15C and F-15E.

"Nur acht." Galm 1 harshly retorted, as she shot down one Berkut. This one was hard to kill, doing streak of sharp turns, but in the end, she was able to get in his six and a pair of missiles was enough to end him.

Grabacr leader was closing on the F-15E. But as he was aiming his SAAMs on the Strike Eagle, his lock-on warning blared. The F-15C had managed to evade his squad mates' fire, and was slowly catching up with him, as he went a bit stationary to aim accurately. Two missiles followed, that he fooled by flying vertically. The Eagle followed him, but not for long. Using his airbrakes, he ceased to climb and managed to level on the path of his pursuer. Immediately Galm 1 tried to level below him to evade the gun fire, but this was negated when another Su-47 fired from her two o'clock. Her cockpit was hit and shattered in a million glass pieces, and a bullet went through her right arm. She was now bleeding heavily from this wound, even if it was a bit limited by the pressure of her anti-g suit.

"Du bist Tot, Söldnerin!" A Grabacr member shouted at her, as he was flying near his leader, and thought he would just have to gun it down. This Belkan was quite surprised to see the aircraft steering toward him, and actually engaging him. Despite the sufferance, she was willing to end this day, and her life fighting, not being defeated.

The two aircraft went for each other head on. Laura heard the bullet grazed her plane as they fired at each other. But he missed her, and this actually gave her an opportunity to fly below him. He could have expected this merc to try to hit him and die in self-sacrifice. Never to pull-out a sub-machine gun and fired at him from below as he flew above the very damaged Eagle. Bullets pierced the cell of his plane, which ended up exploding above Directus.

Yet this moment of glory was her last. A SAAM from the Belkan leader struck her on the side, and luckily her death was almost instantaneous. Halo 9 didn't last long. Surrounded by the Belkans, his plane filled with bullet holes, he met his demise when trying to impact on some Berkut, but the more mobile fighter escape his path, and when to his six to end him.

"In the end, Osean and Sapin reinforcements achieved nothing. They were slaughtered plain and simple by this very aggressive team." Pixy commented the uselessness of those allied pilots Osea just throw in the furball.

"She met her end fighting, and with hopes of survival. While us... If we have some other fights I don't know if we will survive them." Iskanda commented, having lost her confidence since the shifting of balance in favor of Belka.

"Guess now it's the time for you to speak about this second chapter of your life." Pixy pointed out; a bit relieved from having shared his pain. People say that happiness is the only thing that grow stronger when shared, but maybe sadness go weaker when shared.

"So, last time we were 19th of June 1986, with me fleeing from my mother. I fled to the West, toward Shilage. I didn't spend much time there, trying to put as much of a distance between me and my birthplace. Then I headed North toward Voslage. The small kingdom has turned into a republic recently, creating a bit of chaos as some nobles paid scums to generate disorder against this government they were refusing to recognize. And of course, as this was reinforced by a lack of local police, Erusea took advantage of this situation to send some "overseers", under the disguise of helping the locals."

" I know this quite well. It led to an invasion of Shilage and Voslage by the warmonger king of Erusea in 1991 and later the invasion of Delarus in 1993. Laura and I have fought in this war. In the end our allied have managed to obtain an honorable truce, with Shilage and Voslage becoming semi-autonomous Erusean province." Pixy recalled this sad episode of history. At least now Erusea was more peaceful since the king had been overthrown by his own offspring that wanted a better place to rule, and not a big patchwork of battlefields.

" To be fair their strategy was quite simple: they funded local gangs through dead boxes and such, allowing them to grow and thus showing the inabilities of the local police. Then they would arrest those thugs they helped quite easily as they were all holding them with a good leash of money. And all of this led a deprived and weakened girl to try to steal from one gang and failing in her task, and forced to run, pursued in the cold streets of a city she was just beginning to know." Iskanda put together the big History and her personal one.

 **Historical center of the city of Voslage, Voslage, 13/11/1986, 21:30, Weather: little cold fog.**

A small silhouette was running on the wet pavement in the small narrow streets of the old Voslage, trying not to slide on them. Once it already happened to her, and it did hurt a lot. She just wanted to find some food that those thugs were selling far too high. She had almost succeeded when someone caught her, forcing her to run as he threatened her with an old rifle, outranging her small blade. She managed to evade the poorly aimed shot by laying flat quickly but was quite afraid when she heard the sound of the rifle being reloaded.

And now she was on some place she hadn't remember the name yet. The only thing she remembered that there was a church there, and that on its left transept a pretty big scaffold made to replace the rose glass along with removing the black marks created by pollution on its facade. Maybe if she could arrive there quickly enough, she could lose them. So, despite the cold air burning her lungs at each breath, she speeded up her running. She was sure they wouldn't just hand her to the police, the Voslagean or the Erusean overseers. They surely reserved a fate similar to what her mother had foreseen.

However, a little surprise met her: the workers had removed the first set of ladders allowing to climb on the scaffold, maybe to avoid that homeless took shelter there. Even if those perfectly rule-followers weren't taking into account the young women that could bother the bands of thugs. Furthermore, the metallic structure was wet and thus hard to climb on. So, she took her thin scarf that masked her face during her little raid, tore it in half, rolled it around her hands and try to climb on the scaffold. Twice she slipped on the cold metal and was hearing the running thugs coming closer. At the third one she managed to get to the first stage, and then kept climbing on the ladders without turning back.

"Damn, where did that thief go?" One thug, which was holding a searchlight began to ask.

"She must be hiding somewhere. you two stay close to the scaffold, the other you come with me to circle the church's perimeter." An elder thug, wearing a blue hoodie and dark jeans ordered.

As she was seeing this from the top of the scaffold, near the empty space left by the removed rose glass, she authorized herself a bit of relief. She sighed a bit but couldn't properly relax: the weather was getting colder and colder by the minute, and the thugs seem to be not willing to let her escape. So, she glided through the scaffold to arrive on some balcony slightly lower than the rose glass. A wooden door was linking it to the inside, closed by a small lock. But the lock fell to her blade. She had become quite good at picking lock with it, as sometimes stealing was a part of a homeless fleeing girl's life.

She slowly closed the door back and began to descend a small turning staircase. From the top of it she saw that the church was almost empty and plunged into darkness. Only a few candles near the altar were still burning. If she had been more careful, she might have seen an old hairless man in white habits right behind it.

It took her half a minute to go down those stairs that had quite sharp turns to say the least. She then lunged the rows of chairs, but by walking this way, she stepped on some heating system exhaust port that were now off, as they were only used during some ceremonies. The heavy tapestry on the center of the church didn't help her being stealthy either. And all that noise surely disturbed this man she didn't saw, because when an old voice spoke, coming from nowhere and everywhere due to the resonance, she was quite goose-bumped to say the least.

"It's a bit late for vespers, young one."

"Who's speaking?" She worryingly asked, pulling her blade and starting to walk slowly toward the altar. The voice was clearly stronger there.

"This is not the time for ceremonies. And I have rarely taken confession at this hour." The old priest kept talking, sat on his prie-Dieu. He had heard the running and shouting outside. He knew why this scared daughter was here. Or he thought knowing at least. Fleeing everything: fate, her fears, and her past. Taking confession surely made him good at reading voices through the years. And it was clearly the voice of someone who was fleeing.

"I have nothing to confess. I won't have my will tempered by feeling of regret." She replied, despite the blood marks on the blade becoming clearly visible due to the big candles' light.

"Still, it's not a place to sleep either. The heating system is locked, and you will soon freeze on the cold wood or limestone." The priest rose from behind the altar, surprising a bit the young girl that didn't expect to see someone praying at this hour.

"And so, what's happened next?" Pixy asked, curious about the development of Iskanda's past. This time, it wasn't bloody nor scary, just a bit surprising.

"He offered me a room in his presbytery, using an underground way in an old crypt to evade the band of thugs. The maid there called him Monseigneur Myriel. She was quite uneasy with me, maybe for good reasons. She was a bit right to be wary about me. The thing was that I did not repay their hospitality him very well." Iskanda answered with a slightly awkward voice. How could she feel awkwardness toward this doing and not toward her almost matricide was weird to say the least.

"I steal from him. Some old compass. And one other awkward point is that when I flee from his house, I mistake his room's door for the entrance's. I thought he was sleeping but he surely wasn't, because he wasn't surprised a single bit when I was brought to him by Voslagean policemen that recognized the compass, when I used it to set my motion."

"I can see that. Quite a miserable scene I would guess." Pixy could already depict the scene in his mind. But obviously he couldn't guess the unorthodox priest's reaction.

 **City of Voslage, Voslage, 14/11/1986, 07:30, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

The young woman was held by two policemen, right in front of the presbytery door. Now she was beginning to regret her act. ''Regret'' she repeated in her mind. But it was something she thought to be only utterly gone.

"We caught that thief who was trying to get out of the city before dawn, bishop Myriel." The elder officer explained, with the cleric watching the scene with a strangely amused face.

"But why didn't you say I gave this compass to you? People need guidance in life." The cleric responded, to the surprise of all involved persons here. Even his maid, who told him to be cautious about this girl was completely cut off guard.

"If it's a gift, then you have no reason to hold this lady. You can go, I will just fix some minor details." He dismissed the two policemen, who only felt uselessness at that point in time.

"I admit that's a weird reaction." Pixy judged this bishops' doings. He guessed it had to come from the notion of forgiveness and mercy that some clerics possessed in this world, and that him as a battle-hardened mercenary couldn't get a grasp on. He could understand these concepts for sure. But never feel any of them toward someone who would steal from him for sure.

"He was right about guidance. He told me I could become many things, as I was in a crossroad of destiny: student, teacher, politician, preachers, believer, leader, astronaut, champion, truth seekers. But that I couldn't just stay an exiled fleeing girl." She agreed this old man was right. And now she might be needing guidance too, but there was no one around to provide it.

"Und was passiert danach (and what's happened next)?" Pixy wondered how this only light chapter of Iskanda's story could end.

"He sent me to Farbanti, his home city. There I got a place to live and to study. For once I know peace and serenity. For once I could be just a simple teenager, growing like any others." She recalled the order she followed.

"Well, we all have our time of peace in our busy lives. Even if they are always way too short." Pixy responded, agreeing that he would have liked to have a bit more peace in his life.

"To be peaceful, it was peaceful. After all, living for three years in a conv…" Iskanda began further explanations but was interrupted by Pixy who almost burst of laugh.

"Great. That takes the cake. The murderous mercenary with a mind filled with matricidal thoughts lived in a convent?" Pixy couldn't believe what she was explaining. And it was quite hard to try to figure her out walking in some cloister, wearing some homespun.

"I did. But I wasn't fully in the convent. I was living in its wall but without all its rules. It was in those years that I grew an interest in motorbikes - and get my Motoraddführerschein - and also for fighter jets after seeing some Sukhoi with orange lines doing some Himmelmans during an airshow." Iskanda retorted with a slightly annoyed voice, fully understanding that this moment of her life didn't cope really well with the image of merciless pilot she was giving right now.

"It must be funny, to see someone doing back and forth travel between a convent and a school on a motorbike. Or just utterly unusual."

"You can say it for sure. To be exact I owned a ZBM (standing for Zwei B M: Belkan BewegungsMittel: Belkan means of transportation, Belkan equivalent of BMW) at that time. Stable and sturdy." She specified her model, a known Belkan one.

"That's quite a good choice for that kind of thing. But I guess that like with me, your peaceful time didn't last long, or you would have kept that compass as well as your harpoon." Pixy began to point out the obvious.

"I can explain that. In that talk with Myriel, at one point he took my hands and saw the callus created by the use of my blade. He told me that I had the hands of a warrior. But that in the same time he hoped those hands would not become the ones of someone who reveled in slaughtering her next one." She recalled that little bit of philosophical phrase he quoted then.

"He had quite some stern point of view on why to fight, I see." Pixy judged this righteousness, that could be admirable for civilians, but deadly in a bad sense in war times.

"He thought there was only nobility in fighting for the ones who cannot. But to become what I am now I have only fought for myself. I have killed people who hadn't any chances at fighting me. This is why this compass he ceded to me is still in my chamber in Farbanti. Now it must be in some sealed place, due to all of the mess I caused when fleeing." She finally explained why she kept only the bloodstained harpoon.

"Those so-called honorable way of fighting are for knights. But we aren't knights. We are mercenaries. Thus, we fight as we see fit." Pixy commented with a somewhat harsh voice, enable to cope with the idea of clean wars.

"And now it's time to eat." Iskanda finished their talk, not willing to go into flight of philosophy again, and began to gear up to go outside again.

"And next step of the day will be to cook some Belkan." Pixy reminded her of their busy schedule.

"I know, I know. I will have something to ask Herr Steller about for this questioning session. See you at the mess." She left the room with a scary smile. Even the Joker would have found her smile more fearsome than his right now if he knew the mad scheme that she was ready to use to make this Belkan talk.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 20/05/1995, 14:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Günthar Nühmer, former F-15S/MTD pilot of the squadron led by the sinister "Docteur Guillotin" had never conceded anything to anyone. No Ustian nor Osean officer managed to make him talk about Belkan Wunderwaffen. Even when he was younger, he had a strict no snitch policy in Gymnasium. Hervin had warned him he should talk. After all, this Galm 1 pilot knew how to impress people with dreadful results. The best example he knew was Gelb 2. That unlucky guy saw her disintegrating his leader using those static FAEBs. He said he felt the warmth of the flames born of the remains of his leader. No wonder why he was now suffering from pyrophobia (the fear of fire).

"Do you really think I will talk?" The Belkan pilot rejected the possibility of her being successful, rolling his eyes at her in disdain

"You will." She said as she entered the room. She was carrying three things: some kind of thermos, a chocolate bar and a metallic clamp who was maybe more used in chemistry that in questioning. In modern questioning of course, in old ones such instruments could have been used in very hurtful manners -funny ones for Iskanda-.

"To be honest, I don't see where you're going." The Belkan pilot kept his proud stance, despite being locked to this table in this interrogation room.

"I have only two questions that I'm sure you will answer quite easily." She began this unorthodox questioning. But against some Wunderwaffe every way was permitted. As long as she didn't kill him it was fine.

"Do you like iced chocolate?" She asked nonchalantly, even if the question seemed to have nothing to do with the subject of this talk.

"If I must be specific, I will say I prefer that Stracciatella flavor that Emmerians have created. Aber ja ich mag es. Warum? (But yeah, I like it. Why)" The Belkan pilot answered, utterly lost in his tentative to find some sense in the current topic.

"Gut. One point. Now a bit of physics. I guess you know what sublimation mean?" She kept enacting her strange scheme.

"Ja. Von Solid bis Gas. But what's the matter with all of this?" The Belkan asked back, trying once again to think her strategy through.

"Well, since Thesermeister has been turned into plasma and energy I had to do the physics too. But now we are done talking." She gave him quite a cryptic answer. Then she opened the thermos but using thick gloves. When the metallic cover was removed, it let heavy wisps of matt white gas pour out of the container.

"What are you going to do to me with liquid nitrogen?" The Belkan inquired to know, recognizing the liquid to the heavy wisps it was producing when in ambient temperature.

"Oh, just some homemade iced chocolate. A good dessert. Or a good way to die." She smirked at him, slowly inducing the cold venom of fear in his mind.

"Ich verstehe nichts. Was passiert hier (I don't get it. What's the hell is happening here)?" Günthar expressed his misunderstanding of her intentions that were not friendly at all. After all, the fact that mercenary who just lost all of her wing mates but one to Excalibur could be only that unfriendly was an absolute certitude.

"I guess I will have to give a bit more of this physic lesson. What can happen when it's an isochoric sublimation?" She kept this strange questioning going, much to her joy.

"Iso-wie?"

"Isochoric. With constant volume. If we follow Laplace's rules, in this case the pressure increases dramatically, and you obtain an explosion." She recalled some old physic lesson that she once followed during her studies in Farbanti.

"Are you going to make me die of boredom? Because it's the good way to do so." The Belkan pilot yawned, having zero interest in those thermodynamic concepts.

"Dying because you ingest a piece of iced chocolate at a few dozen Kelvin will surely be funnier, mein lieber Kameraden. If I assume the equivalence of energy correctly, the explosion would be like if you swallowed a small grenade. Enough to kill you in a very excruciating way." She finally explained what fate she was deserving him, and by doing so she plunged a piece of the chocolate bar into the liquid nitrogen, contemplating the nice wisps around it as the face of the Belkan was in a state near catatonic shock.

"Was? Du bist verrückt! (what? You're crazy!)" The Belkan pilot shouted, realizing after a moment of silence that maybe static FAEBs were a good way to go. At least it would have been instantaneous.

"It will be so fun, writing "killed by isochoric sublimation of chocolate" in the reports." She said, now laughing madly at this thought, while closing the piece of now very deeply frozen chocolate. Small wisps were still around it due to its very low temperature.

She could see the Belkan firm stance slowly shattering under the terror, fearing such a gruesome death she was very likely going to impose to him. She could hear his teeth hitting each other as he was trying to vainly contain his stress. Just to be sure it was still deeply frozen, she put it back in the nitrogen a bit more, before beginning to approach the now deadly piece of chocolate. And she was surely taking her tall seeing him suffering, shaking like a leaf, maybe now more afraid of this way of dying than her when she met the Helligen Kolumne yesterday.

Him on the other hand was slowly losing his countenance. His hands were beginning to move erratically as he trembled more than if he was in a local snowstorm. At least you could protect yourself from a snowstorm. But from this very painful death he might have deserved for being such a proud and stubborn Belkan, he couldn't protect himself at all. First, he would feel his lips burning. Then his tongue and mouth. Maybe even at some point, if that piece' of deeply frozen chocolate was truly deeply frozen, and it was the worst-case scenario for his now overactive mind, the temperature in his lung would become so high that the air would ignite by itself. There could not be more painful way to die for his point of view. Of course, this girl was crazy enough to figure out even more gruesome way of dying.

He even tried to free himself of his restrains, but they were way too solid and well-build to cede to human strength. And when she forced him to open his mouth, nearly dislocating his lower jawbone, he knew she wouldn't hesitate in killing him. Her attitude was firm and determined. This little piece of sweet was going to kill him in such a horrible way that now he was finally understanding why Gelb 2 was in such a state by now.

So, he chose survival over duty for once. Some commander once said that survival was paramount, some others that duty was. And he was definitely going to choose to live. Thus, he almost broke in tears when he asked her some pencil and paper sheets, in order to draw Excalibur and its surrounding. This he told him with a very reluctant and fearful voice, fearing that piece of deeply frozen chocolate like the charcoals old executioner would use for their questioning. She just replaced the fear of fire by the fear of extreme cold, both able to cause intense pain through burns. She put it back into the liquid nitrogen, still with a mad smile of success on her face.

And as such, under his still shaking hand, the shape of Excalibur was slowly coming on the paper. If she had to compliment that guy for one thing, it was for his drawings that had some quality within them.

Soon the first drawing was finished, explaining Excalibur's surroundings. The giant tower with a cylindrical base housing the Wunderwaffe was preceded by four heavy jammers that made even radio useless if used at maximum intensity. Excalibur was flanked at the South and North by two small industrial areas, with all linked by railway, on which obviously RTLSs could be set. Obviously, such buildings would have some lighter pieces of AA artillery nearby, and heavy ceiling or even armored ones. Then the Sword of the king itself was surrounded by three big concentric circles of solar panels covering almost a square kilometer, with each separated from the others as well as the exterior or the tower itself by railway, with RTLSs that could come from underground entrenched hangars around the outer layer of solar panels, or from others below the Sword of Kings itself.

And if its title was Sword of Kings, King of Swords could have been fitting too. The first stage of the superstructure was a five hundred meters hemicylindrical tower, a bit similar to a chimney from a nuclear power facility, but with five hundred meters of heights and a good three hundred meters in diameter at the bottom and fifty at the top. Some diagonal buttresses were added to the structure, with a little amount of protuberances which could be used as supports for point defense cannons, both energy-based and with conventional ammo. On the platform between the lower part and the "Sword" which seemed to be embedded into the superstructure energy-based and conventional AA artillery could also be set.

Then, there was the Sword itself. The blade was oriented on an East-West axis. Furthermore, it bore the same strange double cross that Ste Victoire's Spear bore on that rose glass in Directus. The last piece was the top of the tower, which was a simple cupola that had a very high likelihood to house its main weapon, or at least its main reflectors.

Finally, on the third sheet of paper there was a strange drawing: some in a strange scissors-shape partially opened, of a base North of the Northern industrial zone. Basically, it was just two big runways allowing the Gault squad or the ADFX-01s to back Excalibur's impressive array of defense if needed. Two aircrafts could land on one runway and two others take off on the other one, or even four at once, allowing the eight aircraft formation of the Gault team to be deployed quickly.

"Any idea of internal structure, mein lieber Kameraden?" She asked, hoping to find some elevator shaft to do some fun inside flight.

"No. Kupchenko made sure it's impossible to fly through it. No great corridors, and no great shaft either." The Belkan pilot said with great reluctance, slightly happier to know she would meet hell there.

"I have no idea of which matter was used either, nor if there's any other Wunderwaffen protecting it. Unlike my squad leader I wasn't affiliated to the Pendragon project, which granted us access to those F-15S/MTDs. But it's surely a very hart mixture of metallic alloy, ceramics, composites, and carbon nanotubes."

"Good. Mister Perrault, you can come in. He has spoken." She announced, satisfied of her achievement. The said Osean officer had been watching the scene unfold through a stainless glass, and at some point, was a bit puzzled, slightly afraid or surprised by her methods of questioning, but results were all that ether mattered to him

"Interesting, these drawings. I will transmit then to your IT technicians here; they should be able to create some 3D model of it for future briefing." The Osean officer gauged the results of today's interrogations. They had no certainties, but this man wasn't hesitating here. Life or death situation sometimes made man act in foolish ways, he assumed.

"Can we expect a counter-attack in the oncoming days?" Iskanda asked, eager to avenge her comrades and create one more caldera in Belka's landscape.

"Not today nor tomorrow. What we can expect is long range strike from our side at them." He muttered to her, wanting not to inform the Belkan. Then he headed out toward the IT technicians' location.

"You were wrong, this chocolate bar was very good." She spoke, while eating the piece she used to threaten Nühmer.

"Was? Es war eine ganze Witze (what, was it just a big joke)?" The Belkan barked, expecting her to be burned but no. She only had a bit of water born of condensation on her lips, not liquid nitrogen.

"That's called an ultrasonic steam generator. Great to create those wisps of gas." She retorted as she used the clamp to pull out of the thermos some small metallic cylinder featuring a mike on one side.

And then she left the room, laughing madly at the unfortunate Belkan pilot which was toyed by his own fears. She had played with his fear like if he was a kind (kid). Now he was understanding why some pilot she left survived were truly feeling the burden of survivors and wanting to kill themselves.

"Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Zeichner (goodbye, Mr. Drawer.)." She waved out of the room, ready to tell everyone how it went. It was a bit sadistic but feeling successful in something when her last mission had ended in utter disaster was so good for her.

And in the following minutes, everyone was laughing of Günthar's misfortune. Even Pixy who was not very gifted with humor did enjoy her recalling this funny questioning. Still to Iskanda's point of view it could have been way funnier if they had authorized her to do a bit more than psychological torture. She liked a more corporal approach of questioning, but sadly those Osean soldiers had some ethics.

 **North West of Ceres Ocean, 22/05/1995, 3:00, Weather: fair with little cloud coverage.**

A small group of Yukte Sea Flanker was approaching their carrier. Some Yak-141 Freestyles were going after their assault carrier. Amongst them was a girl named Anouchka Dussika. She was flying an Su-33 with two-tone blue grey camo. Now they had finished their aerial patrol over the area, helped in the task by some Osean patrol craft and airborne radars. This seemed useless to her. Of course, the Belkan had destroyed some of the EWRs with their strikes at Wesson, Lumen and Directus, but she wasn't seeing any way that the Belkan could exploit to do damage at such a distance from their homeland. Even with air-refueling being a factor, such attack would always be repelled by their numerically superior forces in the area.

As such, she wasn't worried a single bit when she was about to land on their carrier, the Sputnik 3. After all she had learned from her senior officer that Yuktobania had decided to take the initiative and launch retaliatory strikes, from both the mainland and submarine hidden in the Foster bay at the South-west of Osea, and even some other in the Adaman sea, near that autonomous group of Islands that the Socialist Republic of Adaman Islands was, situated at the South of Bana city's Bay. Nothing could reach them at this distance, or only ICBMs.

"Zmiorka 2, you are clear to …" The carrier landing officer was giving her the clearance, but suddenly her radio went dead, replaced by disturbed electric noise. Such level of EMI (electromagnetic interference) can only have few explanations. The possibility of Belkans having managed to squeeze through the SSRs (secondary surveillance radar) was close to zero. This had to come from something else.

"Carrier, what's happening? answer me?" Zmiorka 2 worryingly asked, feeling the strange feeling of uncertainty spreading through her veins. And as she looked up toward the sky, strange lights had appeared in the upper layers of the atmospheres. Not blue or turquoise ones that have been reported as sign of incoming Excalibur strikes, but bright orange ones. This achieved to turn this uncertainty into deep fear, and the fear went only deeper as she realized that she was only talking to herself and that her fly-by-wire controls were now non-responding.

A deep stall was her end, right on the aft of her carrier. The big ship wavered due to the strength of the impact but was still floating. Yet she didn't keep floating for long, as a bewildered Yukte cruiser went right on her flank, as a result of both ships losing their engines and rudder control. The impact was terrible, nearly cutting the carrier in half while the cruiser was now sinking but embedded into the carrier. Yukte sailors were desperately trying to expel the cruiser that was now involuntarily moored onto theirs. Both ships sunk at 3:30, despite the Yukte sappers resorting to blow the cruiser in half to try to lesser the weight on the carrier. All other this area, Yukte plane were falling, having lost their electronic compensators. One assault carrier met the same fate when one Yak-141 having lost his vectoring nozzles descended too quick on the hangar deck. It didn't cause it to sink immediately, but the flames and the shockwaves of the impact created so much eddies in the air above the carrier than a pair of Freestyles collides, only to have their remains falling on the hole the prior impact had made on the carrier. Burning from the inside, and its electronic extinguishing system out of control due to EMI, the assault carrier blew up at 3:20.

Some fighters manage to survive the pulse that were affecting the entire fleet, but it was useless in the end, as refueler never came, and they were all running low on fuel as they were supposed to land. Entire squadron were lost at this battle without real opponent to fight.

And even the ones that managed to bail-out over the sea did not last that long. The unfortunate sailors of ship sunk by collision meet the same fate, which was similar to what their long-dead brother-in-arms of the OFS Indianapolis suffered forty years ago. But unlike those sailors in this war fifty years ago, the sharks were not turning around them before eating them. They didn't wait this time. It was an unexpected effect of this EMP disaster. In some twist of destiny, the electromagnetic discharges affected the electrosensibility of the sharks, leading entire schools of them to the place where the sinking occurred. It is said that the next day, around the wrecks, the man-eaters were still feeding on the dead bodies, and that the blood spots were bigger than the oil spots from the sunken ships. Sadly, this already lost battle wasn't fought on one field only.

 **Eagling Straits, Osea, 22/05/1995, 3:10, Weather: overcast.**

Two aircraft Carrier were cruising here with their escort, the OFS Lexington and Yorktown. They had seen almost no action, as they were on an anti-piracy mission near Verusa when the war started. The deep valley that was constituting the Bennion Sea was a perfect hiding place for this strike group. And soon their fighters would leave for the foreseen assault on Excalibur. Everyone was eager to destroy this Belkan Wunderwaffe.

But here again, nothing went as planned as the CAP patrol was returning from their duty. Suddenly, all lights on all ship where shut off. As a result, confused Osean pilots went the wrong way to land, and failed absolutely. One had lowered his altitude fifty meter to soon, he went to low, and in the wrong axis. The impact with the bow of the ship was terrible, making it tilt dangerously. It would have been fine if it was just one that missed his landing. But the flames of the explosion were too bright for the other pilots that were following him, equipped with night goggles. Hereby, three others explode on the stern section, but higher than the water line. Yet the last that impact the carrier almost blew up inside the forward hangars, and as such formidable explosion began to occur and propagate the fire to the ship. Anti-fire door closed automatically as their system wasn't an electronic one. However, the captain of the ship knew very well they wouldn't last. A decision needed to be made. He had to try to save his ship.

"Lieutenant, transmit this order to our field engineer we have onboard: Detonate the boat below the water line." He conceded, feeling heartsick as he had to damage his ship to save his men.

"But sir, we will flood still intact areas! Are there no other means to stop this fire?" He required a certainty of absolute necessity to transmit such order, which seemed to be borderline suicidal to him.

"There are none. The water pumps are offline, and the CO2 extinguisher are in a locked area now. Transmit this order now!" He yelled at the reluctant officers, who run outside the isle to go transmit this last effort to save the ship.

And at 3:20, as the anti-fire doors were almost ruptured due to the intensive heat, loud explosion shook the entire ship, making it tilt terribly. Men who were on the bridge fell, and some surely died by falling from such heights. The ship tilted the most to the bow, as water was flooding the destroyed section. The fire was extinguished quickly by those hundreds cubic meter of water that suddenly entered. The Yorktown was saved, but at what cost ? half of the crew was injured, heavily burned, or even dead in the flames, and all the pilots had to bail out over the land, like all the pilots of the CAP from the Lexington did, sparing it from any damage due to fail landings.

And slowly the ship recovered from the electromagnetic pulses. Workers and firemen from other ships had come, bringing with them some CO2 extinguisher too. The ship wouldn't be capable of conducting air strikes against Excalibur, but she could still be towed to a nearby harbor in order to receive repairs to her bow section. Furthermore, most of the pilots that had safely ejected other the land had been recovered by patrol from local military forces, and would be sent to the next base shortly, to keep the fight to the air.

But the worst was still to come. The electromagnetic pulses that the ship suffered from where only one cause. The first impact, and the subsequent shockwaves that followed it due to munitions exploding in the fire amplified the nascent phenomenon. And the phenomenon reached worrying level when the charges set by the field engineer blew up. But what was this phenomenon: simple, the same that sealed the fate of the first Yorktown in the previous war. Fate was definitely playing twister today, to be that twisted. From the weaken electrovalves and ruptured seals vapor of volatile jet fuel began to flow. The workers didn't pay that much attention, as the vapor was mixed into the air still reeking of the strong smell of burned metal. As such, they allowed this time bomb to be born, as more and more vapors were filling the poorly ventilated hangars due to the ventilating systems being out of commission. What caused the ignition, no one knew. No one would ever know. Was is some short-cut caused by a damaged cable? Static electricity resulting from the EMI? But its effects were terrific: dozens of workers were turned to ashes, burned, shredded by the shockwave.

This time the fire was the master on board. And the unfortunate captain, which had chosen to stay when the commandant of the fleet told him otherwise, saw it with powerlessness from the isle. In a matter of minute, the fire was breaching the anti-fire door of the arsenal, while dozens and dozens of sailors were blocked into intact areas, due to electronic doors' malfunction. Henceforth, at 4:00, the Yorktown blew up from the inside, damaging the lighter ships nearby, and almost sinking the destroyer that had begun towing him out of the Eagling strait. The Lexington had survived but was left without no projection capacities.

 **Over the Industrial complex of Cranston, North Center Osea state, 22/05/1995, 3:15, Weather: light nocturnal cloud coverage.**

Another simple pilot was now cursing at the allied Forces. But not only at the allied forces, but at herself, as she had volunteered to be at night patrol. And she regretted even more the choice of entering an experimental squadron of Osean X-29As. They created one after witnessing the amazing achievement of the Erusean mercenary that was piloting it for most of her battles that had almost been successful in every of them but the last.

She had seen Northern lights once, in a joint exercise with Yuktobania, Wellow and Estovakia. What a beautiful sign it was, especially from the canopy of a jet. Some old Belkan legend said it was the Valkyries coming from the paradise to pick up the warrior that were deserving to fight another battle at the end of time. But for now, she knew what these lights in the ionosphere were: the sign of death. Her bail-out system was dead and gone were her four onboard computer that allowed the forward swept-wing fighter to obtain some level of stability when in idle flight. She would let a small boy named John Snow orphan; it was her last thought as she entered a spiral of death toward a weapon factory. And what would her husband tell her son to comfort him? That she went maybe fighting heroically until she was outmatched and outnumbered, and not downed by some overloaded leptons.

Her entire squadron crashed upon the very city they were supposed to protect, falling to the weakness of those highly mobile fighters: lose your onboard trim computer, and you are a dead man. Or dead women for her case, but what would it change anyway. Her death was instantaneous, as her airplane fell on this factory despite her trying to veer in any directions.

In an aircraft factory nearby that wasn't hit by falling airplanes, the effect of the EMPs were instantaneous and tremendous as well. All happened as the workers were still around their small tables, quickly and efficiently assembling parts of planes Osea needed if their military wanted to overwhelm the Belkan forces. When suddenly all the neon lights on the roof exploded, this lighting system being particularly sensitive to high fluctuation of electric current. If it was incandescent light bulbs nothing would have happened, or at least it might have been slightly less terrible. But now it was happening. Fire was beginning to spread from the overheated wires, and the reaction of the workers only caused their chief of security to wail in desperation.

" Do not use the water extinguisher, you will only create more sources of ignition for the fire! Use the CO2s you morons."

"Yes, sir." a fellow coworker dropped the useless device to go for a more appropriate one.

But at some point, contrasting with the noise of the fire and of the worker running, water was heard. And if those fools were using it in this section, they were doomed. The officer check two times the schematics and was pretty sure of where this water from an emergency tank was used. He ran toward this area, screaming to firefighters who were using a fire hose, pointing it in a precise direction, a sector where the use of water was strictly forbidden.

"Stop using water, idiots, this sector is full of alkali metals, it will cause a chain..." The officer yelled over the noise of water and flames, but it was too late. An extremely violent explosion caused by the gigantic quantity of water they had already been spread and that due to the chemical characteristics of the alkali metals - causing dihydrogen to pour when in contact with water-. The chain reaction was violent, setting fire to the entire building. Soon, the entire military-industrial complex was burning, from this thoughtless act or falling fighters that struck the area like a meteor shower.

Weeks of munitions and spare parts for their frontlines burned that day. The military might of Osea would greatly suffer from this and suffered even more as other complexes burned to the ground due to firefighters being unable to respond quickly enough, their trucks paralyzed by the electromagnetic pulses. Henceforth, those workers of Cranston would not be the only ones to endure fire, pain and death that night. hundreds, maybe thousands of civilian workers died not by the hand of who they consider their prosecutors, but their protectors that had failed them.

 **Apito International Airport, South-West of Oured Bay, Osea, 22/05/1995, 3:40, Weather: fair.**

A refueler was about to leave to help alleviate some weights on the fighters that couldn't land due to friendly crashes. As such, a good portion of the Night chase of Osea was endangered by the lack of runway or fuel. But the area was subjected to EMI quite quickly, with the upper layers of the atmosphere turning in bright orange. As such, he didn't saw an ace squadron of Yuktobania trying to bank in order to evade its path. Three overflew him, but the fourth member wasn't as good as them at flying without numeric compensators, and as such the KC-135 was impacted in the middle of its fuselage. The fuel tank immediately went ablaze, and red flames brighten a bit the nocturnal sky over the bay.

Another KC-135 went down as he was operating. The fighter that was being refueled, an F-16C as well as the KC-135 suffered from the massive amount of EMIs. The fighter lost a bit of its stability, nothing he could have recovered due to the good stability of the Fighting Falcon. But as it suffered from it while being refueled, and as somehow the electronic pulses caused its afterburners to come to life unwillingly, the probe was ripped out of the Stratotanker. Spewing fuel in the air, as the electronic fuel wave was left open by the EMIs, it caused their downfall to both of them. The afterburners or the electronic instability were enough to ignite the kerosene that was lingering in the air, and another ball of fire highlighted the skies above Apito. The explosion engulfed two other Fighting Falcons in its shockwaves.

Now it wasn't time to fight against any foe. Their foe was themselves, their fear, their power that gave them this false sense of security, and in the same times their weakness that Belka used to create such tremendous event that would be carved in all Osean's memory for decades, maybe more than the Excalibur strikes for the inhabitants of Wesson. Belka had shown that using great unchecked power could have its consequences. And they were deeply suffering from it.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 22/05/1995, 10:00, Weather: clear.**

Far away from all of this damage, and protected by sheer luck and geographical positioning, Valais Air Base was now fully awake **.** The freezing fog that usually engulfed the base at the early hours of the day was now dissipated. Yet the base was soon engulfed into an utter chaos greater than any fog could have created. After the cheers born of Iskanda's success at questioning the Belkan pilot, the moral had gone down again. But this time none of this was depending from them. What caused this chaos, they all learned it while listening to the radio.

"This is Denis Delacre, transmitting not from the Assembly of Nations today but from the Belkan embassy."

"Well, I should thank them for their sudden hospitality. Or the sudden fact that they are the only building which had now electricity." The speaker of the Ustian radio set up the lines for the oncoming broadcast.

"You're right, my dear colleague. Oured is under a severe power shortage. And here's the kicker: not only Oured is under black-out, but almost all of Osea in the Northern hemisphere : from St Hewlett to almost all Northern Osean cities such as Sarsfield, Cranston, Durant, Shubrick, Hollister, Onslow, Fairwether including McCord, Elmirah and Shiloh. The area of the Eaglin Straits, and the inner Bennion Sea were affected as well." Delacre began a little Osean geography lesson, before describing more facts: " Those power shortages led to massive fires, with firefighter teams enable to respond due to the consequences of electromagnetic interference, thus resulting in building being burned to the ground."

"And Osea is not the only one that was affected, since some Yukte delegates from Ocktabursk have reported that the same happened over their home city. Furthermore, unexplained blackouts have happened in the Adaman Islands" The Ustian speaker added, revealing the scale of this incident.

Excalibur didn't seem powerful enough to do that to such a wide area. Sure, its strikes could cause local electromagnetic pulses, but not up to Yuktobania or the Adamans. And if Yuktobania was hit, why wasn't Ustio or Sapin? They were way closer than the Union of Yuktobanian republics. This was what everyone in the room, nationality put aside, thought.

"But maybe Frau Ursula Reutner can give us some answers? I mean, they knew it was coming since they have all this back-up power supply and satellite phones. I'm currently using one, and they are good." Delacre walked a bit into the courtyard of the embassy, toward the concerned one.

Despite being situated in the center of their sworn enemy, the Belkan embassy had never been evacuated. The medieval building was contrasting with the nearby buildings, that were built on purpose to hide that Belkan splinter in the middle of the Osean capital. And its black, yellow and white flag was still hanging on a metallic pole, that looked like a spear. Osean laws were stopped by international rights, and its power seemed to be still strong as the concerned Belkan representative approached the Ustian special envoy with two Belkan soldier escorting her, bearing submachine guns. Delacre was one of the only ones to be allowed here after two Sapin and one Gebetan journalist. Oseans, whenever they would be journalist or anything else were persona non grata at vitam aeternum (unwelcome people for their whole lives) in this place.

"Danke für diese ungewollt Werbung (thanks for this involuntarily advert). Aber ich habe keine rechte Antwort über was passiert diese Nacht. Wir haben nur unser Land verteidigen. Fragt mehr Ihre verehrte alliierte Yukte für diese massive Angriffe. (But I don't have the right answer about what has happened this night. We only defend our land. Ask more your cherished Yukte allied for this massive attack.)." The fifty-years old Belkan lady answered with the most complete politeness, and a big smile on her face. The sight of all of the lights of those building suddenly switching off had been heart-warming to her and any Belkan belonging to the embassy or its security forces.

"What do you mean, the Yuktes?" The journalist asked, dumbfounded that this disaster for the allies was not the Belka's doing at its core, but Yuktobania's.

"Ich werde einfach: Osean Leute fürchten Atombomben. So Yuktobania benutzt Ihren. (I will be simple: Osean people are afraid of nukes. So Yuktobania used theirs.) Und dozens of Nukes exploding in their mid-course over the Osean Land create this disaster for your side, or victory for mine." She explained the forthcoming events that led to this tremendous event. It was now making the previous Excalibur Strikes look like nothing, as those didn't hit Osea at its industrial heart, and above all, in the heart of the majority of its population, that had now seen for most of them their proud defenders fall from their own skies.

"I'm sorry to interrupt that very interesting broadcast, but I have received some data. You should come to the briefing room too, mister Perrault." The old voice of the control tower called them for an emergency debriefing, interrupting the Ustian envoy as he tried in vain to enter the Yuktobanian embassy a few minutes later. And obviously news couldn't be good, giving the circumstances of today.

 **Briefing room, Valais Air Base, Ustio, 22/05/1995, 10:30.**

This time the map wasn't centered around Belka at all. Only Osea, Yuktobania and the Adaman Islands were depicted, with circle around their main cities, and the damage they submitted, such as "inoperable" for Apito international airport at the South-West of Oured Bay, or an estimated numbers of dead sailors due to ship collision, or dead pilots due to EMI , with number from Adaman islands being quite low as they were at the border of the zone concerned by the electromagnetic discharges. But in the end, not the downed pilots, nor the unfortunate sailors, airborne troops or marines were raising the number of dead. Civilian were. Dozens of hundreds that died in factory incident, from either the fall of the CAP planes on it, or fire induced or enhanced by the high-energetic magnetic pulse, that stopped the mechanical process, leading to ammo falling from racks, or from chemical reacting in unforeseen ways, leading to even more incident, fire, intoxications and death. The greater risk was of nuclear incident. Osea hadn't maybe that much nuclear plant, but the ones in Seward or Mildenhall that took EMP at full power could already lead to catastrophes in the nearby areas.

And these numbers were growing by the minute. What should have been a successful saturation attack that should have turned Excalibur to another caldera filled with melted metals had caused a disaster amongst the two superpowers' forces. Still, the fighting will of both countries was only strengthened, as both countries officials were accusing Belka of those cataclysms.

"So, at 22:30 local time Yuktobania initiated a massive ICBM launch, from both silos from their eastern territories and hidden submarines. More than fifty missiles, each bearing five warheads and five decoy head were fired." Perrault began describing the situation.

"But Belka somehow detonate them at high altitude, and It wasn't through their Wunderwaffen known as Excalibur. That we can be sure." Steller analyzed the few data the GHQ could send them, as only few computers were available there.

"Have you anything to say, Nühmer?" Iskanda asked with a very determined voice, as the latter was brought for information. Surely, he wouldn't fell from the same trick, but now that he knew to what extent she was ready to go to make him talk, he would maybe snitch a bit on the other Wunderwaffen Belkan possessed.

"I wasn't as close to Kupchenko as my leader was, and I think it's the same for Hervin. Aber..." He reluctantly replied, lowering his eyes to avoid the deadly gaze from both mercenaries and the Oseans that knew people that were maybe dead by now.

"Aber? Spricht weiter mein lieber (But? Keep speaking by dear)!" Iskanda ordered him to talk, and as he wasn't responding, she pushed him against a wall, and with angered-decoupled force, pin him against the said wall, almost choking him.

"Ich werde sprechen (I will speak)!" He muttered as the unexpectedly strong grasp of this woman was tightening on his throat. He was released and almost collapsed to the ground if she hadn't caught him by his collar, with was quite uneasy to him after this treatment.

"Kupchenko. He once said with a cold smile that Morgan wasn't the only fairy watching over the Sword of the Kings. Merlin is watching too." The Belkan specified, out of breath.

"That must be the name of what they used to intercept those nearly two hundred warheads. But we aren't advanced a single bit." Iskanda shared her mind about those revelations.

"It surely is some satellites. That's maybe why they hadn't the time to launch other reflectors to increase Excalibur's range." Pixy guessed, a bit surprised that Excalibur's range was that small, as its previous strikes could tell.

"First they destroy more than one hundred planes. Now nearly two hundred nuclear warheads. What will be able to bring that damn sword down?" Iskanda rhetorically asked, and no one had an answer. Maybe Thesermeister would have had, but he was now only dust. Or Koenig could have had too. But his remains were surely spread all over the Mt Ivrea by now. This next mission could be their last. Sometimes they would doubt of that before their last missions that ended in such a horrible way, but now it could be a realistic thought if nothing changes. And if nothing changes, the victory could escape from their grasp. After all, war never came with any certainties for each side.

 **This is a little rough for the Oseans, I will say. But this can explain some things that will happen further in this fic. About Iskanda's Past, it's a reference to some French author. I also let some hint about some ace they might encounter if my protagonist ventured in Usea.**

 **About Pixy's it's a reference to a French Belgian comic named "Le secret de l'espadon" and the** **Dunkle** **Wing is inspired by the "** **Aile** **rouge" (because I find that having B2-As as the only delta wing / flying wing bombers of the Strangereal universe to be boring, and because there not enough information released on their Russian (the PAKDA) and Chinese counterparts (That I didn't remember the name yet, maybe some reader can quote it for me...)). They will be more reference to this comic that I love in further stories…**

 **I guess she can question anyone with any means, regarding Günthar Nühmer's interrogation. This time I was gentle. Next, I won't (and it will surely be another M rated scene).**

 **Regarding the Adaman islands, they aren't canon (the designation, not the island itself), they are on some map of the Strangereal with named countries at the East of Yuktobania. I guess that since I'm writing an alternative universe story everything's fine.**

 **I Hope you're still enjoying this story, even if I made suffer those Oseans…**

 **Bis nächst mal, Lesern!**

 **21/1/20:** **some grammatical fixing**


	15. Chapter 9: Operation Jugement

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 23/05/1995, 12:00, Weather: fair with light cloud coverage.**

For once they didn't awake with fog in the valley. At least one event brightened a bit the mood of the sole two sixth Unit survivors, that thought they were the only two remaining pilots of the entire UAF : some Ustian pilots, that had been wounded or with their fighters damaged to greater intensity in battles prior to the fall of Directus had arrived this morning. They were six F-16C pilots, with some from Osean origin. They were the Crow squadron, but unlike the Belkan Krähe squadron they only bore a dark grey camo with a white area around their cockpit and grey nose instead of a more crow-like. The third member of this squadron was particularly verbose. That PJ guy was monopolizing the talk, often recalling how he met his girlfriend while trying to escape some Belkans troops on a bike the day of the fall of Directus: the shockwave of some nearby explosion had made him fell to the ground. He actually met her as he woke up in some Hospital of Directus, having been found unconscious and brought to the said place by this very lady.

"You could have been friend with the Delaire brother to be sure. Sadly, they aren't here anymore." Pixy commented on the almost childish behavior of the young man with brown hair from Bana City.

"Stay focus while fighting, kiddo. Love won't save you from Helligen Kolumne." Iskanda amplified the mind of Pixy on this guy who was surely filled with thoughts of clean war maybe. But such thoughts had been eroded to ashes after the incident the Yukte caused one day ago. Osea had begun to recover, but its military-industrial complex was surely reduced in producing capacity, and now the total losses of the prior strikes and these were equal to a third of the allied forces. Yet now Osea was using its vast roadway network which had a fair number of tunnels to protect its fighters and was resorting to massive deployment of smoke shells to cover their movements. It was what they should have done the day Excalibur struck. After all, it was what the Belkan used with great efficiency against the Osean "death Star" squadron.

"I cannot understand how you went this far in your questioning of that Belkan. Questioning like this belong to medieval era. Even wars have sets of rules to follow." The unconvinced pilot answered, a bit dumbfounded that even his brother-in-arms laughed as she recalled her funny nitrogen trick.

"Yeah, like the ones that forbid the use of chemicals and submunitions. Our own resistance used the first against the Belkan invaders, and I'm using the second in almost every engagement. No Belkan ever complained to me about their use." Iskanda rolled her eyes at Crow 3, almost pretending to be falling back on her seat due to the stupidity -she was considering that refusing what wars were, basically legalized paid murder for her point of view- was only stupid.

"Because you're so merciless than no one survive you." He retorted, trying to find some ways to justify his thoughts that were maybe morally right to his point of view, but that were deep tactical mistakes. Against foes using unrestricted warfare there was no point in restricting your army if you wanted to obtain victory.

"War and mercy are two combinations of power that cannot be melted together. They are two parallel lines, they will never meet, our you would have to change our reality to obtain that. And this war is our reality, Kind. Our world in which and for which we are fighting every day." Pixy steered the talk into some flight of philosophy that he was surely better in than this callow youth.

"Hem, I'm not good at flight of philosophy, mister Pixy. But I hope you will be as good against lasers. We are doing the joined briefing now." Perrault entered into the restroom, still with an appalled face due to the tremendous event of yesterday.

Like many Osean soldier, he had lost someone he knew due to the EMP disaster. Some members of his family lived in Burgen, a medium-sized Osean city located on the shores of the Bennion Sea. The city was crossed by a nice river, the Bur, which had sometimes flooded the city's street, but since 1977 a dam was shielding Burgen, while providing green electricity. There no weapon factory exploded after a plane hit it. No, only one fell on that dam, which had been slightly weakened by local rough weather. And it was enough to make it collapse on the hundreds of houses that it was supposed to supply power and protect. Like so many Oseans, the inhabitants of Burgen suffered from the failures of what was supposed to protect them. His family had been added to the gargantuan amount of civilian losses: 22500 was the number of estimated casualties, which could vary a bit in the oncoming days. Military losses were also quite high, being counted in the thousands. At least the worst had been avoided: the corn bank, place where nearly the two third of the agricultural Osean yield were stocked was untouched. If this complex was one day put in danger, it would not be just a military disaster, but a humanitarian one.

Now he wasn't feeling anything dragging him back to use any means against Belka. He was at this moment ready to offer one to Iskanda, after this briefing. Dealing with unorthodox danger needed unorthodox solutions.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 23/05/1995, 12:30, Weather: fair with light cloud coverage.**

"We now know that the unidentified laser weapon is a long-range offensive weapon codenamed "Excalibur". It is a Belkan anti-aircraft defense chemical laser weapon developed as a ballistic missile defense system following Yuktobania's research in this matter. According to our information, the strike zone is heavily guarded by a jamming facility and multiple antiaircraft artillery units." Perrault announce those already-well-known facts, as the estimated numbers of a dozen RTLSs, and even greater numbers of SAMs, SPKs and TripleAs on Excalibur and around it were displayed by Ustian IT technicians.

"Your objective is not a secret: to destroy Excalibur. But to do that, you must first neutralize the jamming facility and the antiaircraft artillery, in order to diminish the threat for other Osean or Yukte attackers." The Osean officer kept doing the briefing, while a blue arrow was depicted over the Tauberg region, which split in four to attack the jammers.

"Considering the importance of your target to the enemy, I'm afraid there's no way to avoid casualties from the enemy defensive network. In light of this, we have called in reinforcements for this mission. Work together with them to achieve the mission objectives." Some other blue dots appeared at the bottom of the blue arrow. Of course, they already had the Crow squadron from the fourth Ustian Unit. But there were also the mercenary squadrons of Osea, the only ones that were crazy enough, or only paid enough to get close to this target.

"Sorry, but how will we refuel until Tauberg? It's quite far." pointed out Crow 2, a man with paler brown hair that Crow 3 and a less childish behavior.

"Your concerns are not unfounded. Due to the unprecedented anti-air abilities of Excalibur, we won't use usual means of mid-air refueling. Instead, two squadron of EA-6B Prowler will be used at this effect, bearing tanks and probes. It will be done over Glatislant as the still burning caldera is messing with both Belkan and allied radar in the area." Orson Perrault responded, a bit worried for those pilots who unlike the Galm team had never undergone such task. But he was a bit less worried when he told them that no, he wasn't borderline suicidal enough to be willing to follow them aboard an AWACS. Radar recognition would be done by their radars and a swarm of MQ-9 Reaper which would precede them. Of course, those drones wouldn't be a factor in the battle itself, but the intel and the distraction they would provide might spare some lives today.

"Miss Rayien, I still have some issue to talk with you. Just some B plan, since you haven't come with some crazy inside flight schemes. Dismiss." The Osean Officer added, willing to reveal to her only the B plan that in case of failure she would have to enact.

"They are out of the room. What's this plan B you wanted to talk to me about?" Iskanda inquired, a bit surprised that Osean had tactics other than numerical superiority and plunging countries in recession. Even if the latter worked quite fine in many cases in the last decades.

"If you were shot down, even if it's a low probability considering your skills." He was a bit reluctant to admit that this plan B would be enacted in case of utter failure of today's operation.

"Keep saying, even if I'm not planning on getting shot down. I doubt I would survive being turned into plasma." She retorted with a bit of harshness in her voice.

"If you were, we had equipped the under-siege compartment with a sniper rifle and camouflage gear. You will try to shoot Kupchenko when he's on the ground. Osean commandos that have departed after operation Hell Bound will retrieve you at the south of the Tauberg Lander, at the North of the Schayne plains." He explained what this not very imaginative plan was. Now she was wondering why Osea hadn't enact it since the beginning of the war, but she didn't know the danger there was in the Belkan landscape. Some Osean infiltrators had been sent there but never showed sign of life since. And the few that survived a few days only report the horrible death of their compatriots, often their sentinels found with grievous wounds.

"I have received a bit of survival training at Farbanti. Still, why choosing me?" She shrugged, having had no proper training in such black ops.

"Because you're one of the most determined persons here. You won't hesitate when you will shoot him. And to make sure he will die, the only bullet that this rifle is equipped is filled with enough cyanide to kill his entire squadron. Nothing can save a man hit by this." He added. Now it was a certainty that Osea wanted Gault leader dead.

"I do not like poisons, and I would rather kill him close and personally, but for once I will do this." She agreed to enact this unfair plan. But since when war was fair? It was never, as she tried to explain beforehand to that PJ guy. Maybe it was an acronym for two letters, name or surname she didn't know.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 23/05/1995, 13:10, Weather: fair with light cloud coverage**

"So, what was that thing all about?" Pixy asked, a bit curious to know the details of this B plan.

"They want me to amend Kupchenko. Literally speaking." She replied, still a bit unphased to the idea of resorting to poison and referring to this poison's scent. Sure, women had poisoned their enemies for generations, and the greatest poisoner of history were women. But she would rather stab him in the heart and turned him into a bloody mess.

"Good luck." Steller wished her, as they both climbed in their aircrafts, which like the Crow F-16C were only loaded with air-to-ground ammo. A mistake of central command, but they wanted that each aircraft would be able to deal as much damage as possible.

"Viel Glück Dort (good luck there)." were Blaise's encouragements. Even if she didn't want some luck to win today. But was luck really enough against a one-kilometer high laser weaponry that could surely shot down a Star Destroyer with more ease than an ion cannon?

"I wish you the best of luck in battle." were Perrault's.

 **Over Mt Ivrea, Belka, 23/05/1995, 13:30, Weather: heavy cloud coverage.**

The rough weather could be explained by the massive smoke shell barrage as well as Excalibur's fire that was slowly turning these clouds into giant thunders. Sadly, they could not use this cover in the vicinity of the Belkan Wunderwaffe: at this distance, it was possible to launch a great volley without Excalibur intercepting too much of them. Furthermore those artillery pieces that were used for this purpose didn't possess a very great range, and if the Osean servants put their pieces to be in range of firing their smoke shells at Excalibur, the Sword of the King would very likely be in range to fire at them too.

At least they weren't going to be alone here. Outside the nearly twenty EA-6B present here to refuel them, the Osean merc were quite numerous. There was the domino squad of twelve Typhoons painted with a black and white and black eponymous paint scheme, the Savage squad which was comprised of ten F-16Cs with grey paintjob and black stripes, and the thirteen F-14Ds of the Joker team, that had a pale violet two-tone camo.

"Damn it, this is aiming at the eye of the needle." Crow 3 complained about the difficulty of such mid-air refueling methods. He had troubles closing on his prowler, a bit shaken by the eddies created by the ascendant wind over the edge of the mountainside. But it was that or being disintegrated.

"Come on, I'm sure I could be aiming for the eye of a real needle while dogfighting." One Osean merc mocked him, as he was unlocking his probe from his refueler.

"I'm glad you're the last to refuel on my aircraft and the probes are flexible enough. Otherwise you would have ripped it off." One EA-6B pilot complained of the almost failure of PJ at refueling his craft.

"Be ready for anything when attacking the jammers or Excalibur." Galm 1 warned the other pilots, cutting PJ who was beginning to argue with the probe operator, as she disconnected from her probe. She still had trouble refueling with fighters due to her receptacle's being behind her cockpit, but less than with the Espada team 4 days ago.

"We shall succeed if we have the Galm team with us!" Crow 4 try to cheer up the mood, even if there was no certainty of victory. There would have had prior to operation Dynamo.

Now the forty fighter pilots kicked their afterburners toward the North of Schayne plains, while the twenty refueler were supposed to retreat through the lake near Wesson. Few EA-6Bs would make it out alive.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 23/05/1995, 14:15, Weather: fair.**

They had arrived this far. If only they could put aside the loss of five refuelers as they were getting out of the South of the Schayne plains, while the main squadron was crossing them. Obviously all MQ-9 Reaper drones had been already downed, but without any wreckage visible anywhere. Surely Excalibur destroyed them all. And despite the fact that they were supposed to be infiltrating the most secret and powerful weapon platform of Belka, the Crow squadron was chatting at medium altitude, while Iskanda was skimming toward the jammers, which had been added to her radar data by the Ustian IT technicians. Even from nearly one hundred kilometers the huge shape of the black mass raising from the ground was already catching her sight. Almost a week ago she had thought that the central tower or the Twin Barbicans of Glatislant were big.

"If you wait too much, another will steal her away from you, you know." Crow 2 mocked Crow 3's shyness.

"It's not the time to talk about my personal life!" PJ barked, quite angry that not only his wing mates, but the Osean mercs laughed about him before the beginning of the mission too.

"Well, for once you're right kiddo. This is not the place. You will have the right to do that when we will have survived this. And only if." Iskanda ended their dithering, followed by only Pixy who had kicked the afterburners to follow her, leaving the slightly slower F-14Ds, F-16Cs and EF-2000 behind.

And her radar wasn't even displaying that the closest jammer was only at sixty kilometers that Excalibur was already firing. No beam was clearly visible, but when the horizontal Helligen Kolumne began to take shape, three F-14Ds and Crow 6 were shot down in a matter of seconds. They weren't close, they were still far, and they were already having casualties.

"You are entering in dangerous airspace. All units, break, break!" A message from the Osean GHQ pointed out the obvious order that all pilot should have followed since the beginning of this operation.

"Don't forget to put your radar at maximum intensity to see the flyable areas on it." Pixy reminded them, having remembered that physical advices from the now defunct Thesermeister.

As she made her way to the jammers, Crow five and domino eight were shot down. Hopefully no more allied planes were downed by the three attack they were submitted to. And as she was approaching the jammer at the far East, her HUD went crazy. Not because of some Helligen Kolumne, but of one Belkan order.

"Augment ECM to level 10." The Belkan radar officer in charge of Excalibur defense ordered.

"Ver. Behaupten ECM." An ECM servant obeyed, pushing calmly one lever on his panel. He had all the reasons to be calm, after all: he was in Excalibur, well-protected from anything the allied would throw at his jammer kilometers away from his current location, theoretically speaking. At least that was what Kupchenko's engineers were ensuring them.

And speaking of the latter, he was surely taking off by now. He wouldn't miss this occasion to swipe away those Oseans and their allies banging at his doorstep. Besides, his SAAMs weren't disturbed by the ECM, since there were semi-active and not radar guided. Long-range infrared-guided missiles weren't a factor here, as this technology was still in development in most countries. Outside Belkan ERAAMs obviously.

As such, Allied attacks on the Western jammers were greatly hindered and delayed, as the only allied fighters that possessed LAGMs were the F-16Cs. And the SAAMs launched by the Gault unit were preventing them to have a good sight on the jammers in order to manually aimed their ordnance. The Typhoons had come equipped with a mix of SODs and SFFS, but the Stand-Off Dispensers needed proper radar guidance to be used properly and the latter to be dropped from high altitude and slow speed to maximize their effects, and such conditions were not reachable at this very moment.

The aerial fight wasn't even either. While Gault unit stayed untouched in this engagement, this due to their armament and Excalibur covering them, it wasn't the case for the domino team that suffered three losses. Furthermore, some Belkan F-20As had joined the fight, and their SAAMs were giving a bit of trouble to the allied forces, even if they weren't as precise as Gault's'. The heavy jamming that caused their onboard speakers to emit nothing but statics, helped immensely the Belkan defenders, who could still use their phase modulation radio. In the end, Pixy and Iskanda were the least disturbed ones in their assault.

As they arrived over the target zone, choppers took flight, and their locked-on alarm began to blare. Even if Pixy could only lock them with his IR-guided missiles, it was enough to make them deviate from their defensive position. Thus, Iskanda had no trouble at the exception of some AA guns when she arrived over the jammer, with her finger clenched on the release mechanism.

"Here comes a warm present from Ustio!" She exclaimed fiercely, as she flew over the jammers. Not only the jammers were destroyed by her thermobaric ordnance, but the choppers were caught in the shockwaves. The jamming power decreased to a level making radio conversations understandable once again.

"Keep attacking, Sixth Unit." The aerial command ordered. It was unusual to have no AWACS transmitting the orders and providing radar guidance, but anything bigger than a fighter would have been nothing but cannon fodder for Excalibur.

"I have some ground forces around the second jammer. Some AAs only. I will clear them with a FAEB, and you take out the jammer." Iskanda suggested to her wingmen.

"Ver, Galm 1." He answered quickly, kicking his afterburners as EMIs were suddenly intensifying in the area they were standing in. Excalibur was firing.

Both rushed to the next jammer, and missed a bit their aim, but the blast radius of their weaponry was wide enough to clear all of its defenses and cause some minor damage on the jammer's structure, and it was a F-14D that finished it with two well-aimed missiles. Still, he was followed by two Belkan Tigersharks. Pixy let his leader rush on the third jammer, while he chased the two F-20As. They were gaining ground on the Tomcat despite its maneuverability, but the latter had suffered a hit on his wing-root fillet, which caused some asymmetric extension, limiting the ability of what was at one point the world best' turnfighter. But the F-15C was still one of the world's best' fighter in matter of speed and stability, and Pixy was quickly in the six of the two Belkan fighters, firing a pair of missiles at one while gunning the other single aircraft.

"This is Joker five, I'm fine. Thanks, Galm 2." The fighter pilot was glad he survived for now. But he forgot the plasma that was still lingering in the air from a previous shot of Excalibur, and the complete loss of control of his airplane send in spiraling to the ground.

Pixy regretted this loss. Seeing plane going down like that were making him feel useless. To counter this feeling, he went to the rescue of that PJ guy, which was attacked by a Tigershark as he dived to evade a SAAM coming from his three hours. Some bullets scratched the Fighting Falcon ailerons, but not his engine hopefully. Pixy dived toward the F-16C, and as he crossed his path, barrel-rolled slightly upward to have the pursuing F-20A in his crosshairs. A gun burst head-on finished him, but the Belkan pilot had almost managed to aim his SAAM at the F-16C. If Pixy had killed him a second later, the missile would have impacted Crow 3.

"Crow 3, if you are shot down, crash where I can't see." Pixy wished, not willing to see just another useless rescue ending in a stupid death.

"At your orders." The fourth Ustian Unit member responded, almost joyfully, even if he just evaded death mere seconds ago.

In the meantime, Iskanda had destroyed the third jammer, at the expense of one other FAEB. She was keeping the two others as deterrent to shook of some fighter if she was pursued, but she knew Kupchenko was and would be smart enough not to fall in her trap. The others, though, it might be possible to trick them. The fourth one was destroyed by a Typhoon that dropped his SFFSs during a Stuka-dive, but ended up being hit by a nearby SAM. The artillery piece was utterly destroyed by the shrapnels, but as well as the fighter, who almost managed to level, but was killed by a long-range missile coming from almost nowhere. Or it was what the unfortunate Osean merc thought.

"Zveda, one kill." The ADFX-01 pilot claimed his victory, staying a bit far from the furball in order to have his ERAAMs arriving at twice the sound velocity on their target, augmenting their non-escape zone exponentially.

"Galm 1 to all allied, the jammers are fried. Evade those SAAMs spammers and began the attack on Excalibur." She announced as she was herself steering toward the Belkan Wunderwaffe, which was fairly visible by now. She chose to attack it from the side, since Nühmer mentioned the two heavily defended industrial areas at its North and South.

But Pixy, who was between the remains of the two central jammers when the final one was finally put out of commission, attacked from the South. As such, he clearly saw the three RTLS that were shielding the Southern complex. Those were the same that at Glatislant: with light turrets only, thus maximizing their AA potential. He tried to bomb them or launch anything on them, but all was intercepted. He managed to knock out one or two laser turrets as he flew over it with "PC max", in order to evade the lethal discharges, and because of this his gun run lacked accuracy. But eight SODs launched from the four EF-2000s behind him were enough to saturate their defenses, while the train themselves were taken out by Crow one and two's LAGMs.

Yet at this moment, as Iskanda was coming from the side in order to circumvent some of its defense, and as Pixy was approaching the superstructure, both had a plain sight of the Belkan Wunderwaffe. Like the questioned pilot said, it had this chimney-like lower part, reminding Iskanda of some solar power facility she saw being built at the East of the Usean continent. Yet seeing drawing of it and seeing the actual thing were two very disparate things. Even a B-52 Stratofortress could have stood on the top of this truncated hemicylindrical shape. And now the double-cross guard was way more threatening, even if there was a slight gap without gun emplacement between the upper and lower guard. But this gap was vastly compensated by the fact that the faces and the extremities of each guard were bearing at least two TLSs, thus creating a point defense system for every vector of approach. However, Nühmer intel was incomplete: the top was not just comprised of the main laser port, but also of some reversed eight-arms candelabra, with each arm bearing one TLS.

And Excalibur defenses, which were situated on its double cross-guard, on the top of the platform between the two parts, on the diagonal support strengthening the overall structure were not the only ones to open fire. All around it were three concentric layers of solar panels. At least this laser was environmentally friendly, if there was just one good thing about it. From some bunkers built on the hills that were surrounding the small basin in the bottom of which Excalibur was built came more RTLS than at the south. Twelve of them quickly positioned themselves on the railway between the concentric layers of solar panels. To add more surprise, some SAMs, AA guns and SPKs came on self-propelled vehicle from below the supports of the solar panels.

"Gott Verdammt. It's impossible to fly near Excalibur. It's filled with laser artillery." Pixy resumed the situation as he saw the four Typhoon that just destroyed the Southern RTLS being destroyed by those more numerous ones and the fire from Excalibur herself. Now he was forced to circle around it at full speed, trying to drop his bombs, but without great success. The blast of one that was intercepted a bit late by Excalibur defenses maybe knocked out one or two TLSs on the diagonal support, but it wasn't going to do much effect.

"These turbolasers are better than the Executor's. Argh." An Osean F-14D pilot recognized, trying to skim over the ground to escape the fire of the RTLSs, but ended up being targeted by the TLSs on the lower guard. At least his burning fighter went for a solar panel, destroying it. But destroying just one would never be enough to steer the balance in favor of the allied forces.

"Picolaser and Femtolaser. They are far better than these Turbolasers indeed." Kupchenko corrected, enjoying the sight of allied planes being torn off piece by piece by the technical achievement of the Pendragon project.

" There're too many EMIs in the area due to their laser fire. I cannot lock my weaponry properly!" Crow 3 cursed, as he fired two LAGMs and dropped a pair of bombs, with the first losing their track and hitting the ground outside of the complex, and with only one bomb hitting one solar panel, with the other being intercepted by a RTLS. As such, he was targeted by this artillery piece the next second. And as he lost energy flying in erratic turns, his fate was sealed.

"Aber I can aim mine." Erbe 1 fired an ERAAM on him. Fired in the middle of so many fighters flying erratically, the missile went almost unnoticed. Typhoons, Tomcats and Fighting Falcons were maybe too focused on trying to survive as they were forced to constate that they had already lost more than half their initial forces despite having taken all the F-20As. Yet the F-20As were only eight, and their initial forces was forty aircraft strong. As such, with all these alarms, his lock-on alarm blaring continuously, and his radar filled with sparks as the TLSs and RTLSs were ionizing the surrounding atmosphere, Crow 3 didn't see the missile coming for him. His reactor was torn off by the explosion, and his cockpit ejected by the blast was shredded by a RTLS, destroying every remains of his fighter before it could even hit the ground.

"Crow 3 is down." Savage 4 reported, before being gunned down by a far more mobile Su-47. He had managed to evade one SAAM by a streak of sharp turns but fell at his mercy as he bled too much speed compare to the forward swept-wing fighter.

"At least you didn't see him crashing, Galm 2." Iskanda pointed out sarcastically.

"I would have rather seen him crash landing than being disintegrated. But this is war." Galm 2 admitted, a bit sorry for this pilot.

"Indeed, it's war. Pain and Sufferance will be your only allowed feelings. Your losses will be your only birthrights now, Galm 1." Kupchenko said in a solemn manner, as he engaged her, after she had tried to lock one of his wing mate, but ended up having to break the pursuit as her prey flew in the gap between the two guard, leaving Excalibur's servants a free window of fire on her. Her radar was quickly covered by the electromagnetic interference the laser fire was producing. She barely made it, right before Gault 1 engaged her.

"I'm not going anywhere as long as this sword isn't pulled from the rock." Iskanda retorted, despite having to see once more her comrades falling to the technological marvels the Pendragon project had created, while evading Kupchenko's lock.

"Only the King as the right to do this." Kupchenko recalled the medieval legend, maybe foreshadowing the allied forces' fate in their attempt to do so. All false kings that tried to pull out Excalibur ended up dead, after all, following the Belkan Parsifal (Perceval) legend.

"This is domino five. I'm hit, I'm hi…" were the last word of an Osean Typhoon pilot that tried to attack Excalibur main laser port, a TFLS (Tactical Femtolaser System), as his plane was splintered upon the energy deployed by the small TLs around the main one.

"Savage 2, I can't shake that missile. Missile!" The F-16C pilot screamed in terror as one ERAAMs arrived on him, faster than a MiG-31 to his point of view.

"You have only brought these people to hell. And there's not detour to heaven after." Kupchenko taunt her a bit, as she was trying to whir out of his grasp but couldn't shake him in the end.

"I am not the only one coming here." She snapped back verbally, since she couldn't try to attack him immediately.

But after some other whirring session, she did try to attack him, pulling a head-to-tail maneuver, but he countered it by pitching down quickly. This make him gain a bit more of speed, and he used this gained momentum to climb back at her, asserting his position as the pursuer, but she pulled up a second head-to-tail maneuver as he was climbing and thus had lost a bit of mobility. His right wing was grazed by the bullet, and his right rear radar become inoperative afterwards. But in this very close-quarter dogfight it was not an important factor, since it was meant to guide backward fired SAAMs.

"Nice shot. But do you really think our defenses would be too busy with this puny attack, since Osea cannot conduct a massive airstrike due to these EMPs they suffered from their own failures?" He asked her rhetorically, even if the Osean high command hadn't judged good to inform her that Osean B-1s and Yukte Tu-160s would assist them. To be fair, she was discovering that right now, as her radar was set on short range to have the safe fly zone on it.

This was the reason why the two ADFX-01s were now steering out of Excalibur's vicinity to engage those new enemies, following their leader and that merc heading toward those bombers while in constant fighting. The Erbe's craft weren't bearing MPBMs, but the ERAAMs were good enough at dealing with heavy targets. Besides, the allied fighters were far too busy dodging the fire of the Gault team, when dodging it weren't putting them in harm's way, to make thing short in the line of fire of Excalibur. Sometimes the well-coordinated Berkuts would pursue some fighters, without taking them all down by themselves, but they just had to make them overfly Excalibur and either the TFLS or the TLS would tear the allied fighters to pieces, while if they make them fly low they would be dealt with by the RTLS. Three RTLSs, a few mobile artillery pieces and some TLSs on the guards had been disabled during the combat until the arrival of this unexpected bomber squadron, but it wasn't enough to ensure any damage on the Sword of the King. For sure they may have destroyed half of Excalibur solar panels, but due to the importance of their target, they surely had dozens of back-up generators, accumulators and capacitors. In the end, like Iskanda, they could land some hits on their aerial or ground-based opponent, but none were critical enough to down any Gault team members or reduce the firepower of the Wunderwaffe.

 **West of Tauberg, Belka, 23/05/1995, 14:30, Weather: fair.**

The Razor Unit of Osea had been deployed, comprised of 20 B-1s in grey camo. Following them were 20 Tu-160s Blackjack, the Polar Bear unit of Yuktobania, trained to operate in iced territory, and thus with a paler camo. Each and every one of them were packed to the brim with cruise missiles, and separated from each other by at least eight hundred meters, to reduce theirs losses according to their superiors or more to reduce the time an Excalibur strike would need to wipe them out if their leaders had been honest in their briefing. They already had those "Morgans" on their long-range radars and some of them would maybe fell to the ERAAMs those fighters were equipped with. But they couldn't stop such a widespread attack, Razor leader thought hopefully. Maybe with too much hope, yet this hope was strengthened by the sight of some flight of MQ-9s equipped with SODs and QAAMs that were arriving on a more southern vector and would be disturbing the ADFX-01s. Still, an Helligen Kolumne was growing in this sector. Those drones' swarms would not disturb the Morgans for long.

"Merlin, verteidigt das Schwert des Königs (protect the Sword of the Kings)." The Yukte-sounding voice of Anton Kupchenko spoke on all channels. He wanted them to know their doom was coming. And above all, that they would meet their doom without any chance of evading it.

"What's he expecting? To scare us with some fairy tales?" Razor 2 said out loud, as he released a volley of six cruise missiles. Others followed him, and it was soon entire rows of cruise missile that were fired. Nearly one or two hundred of them, if we added all the volleys from the forty bombers. Only some wonders could stop that, he guessed. Yet he was forgetting that Excalibur was a Wunderwaffe.

But here, the wonder wasn't coming from Excalibur itself, not some old wizard Kupchenko was summoning. No, it came from space. Orbiting in geosynchronous orbits, the Merlin satellites were activated once more. Those longilineal pseudo-satellites that seemed to be like gigantic space dragonfly were about to definitively turn the tide of this battle in Belka's favor. They had a main long fuselage solely comprised of hundreds of electric capacitors to store their energy, and two pair of wings, one equipped with electric receptacles allowing Excalibur TFLS to reload them, while the second pair looked like spreading system that tractors would use to spread pesticides. However, in this very case Kupchenko hadn't equipped them with chemical spreader for pesticides, but high yield masers (laser but in the wavelength of the microwave), even if those Oseans would soon be swapped like the pest they were. Thus, with this different armament, their fire would not create Helligen Kolumne meant to destroy large enemy groups.

"Protect Pendragon, Merlin." Kupchenko said with confidence, as a green line was displayed across the control panel onboard his fighter.

If some Osean had been flabbergasted by the Helligen Kolumne, this time their bomber pilots, copilots and flying officers were stricken by astonishment as the sky began to shiver in front of them, turning from a pale blue to a pale violet. Some cruise missiles attempted to do evasive maneuvers and circumvent this obstacle that their onboard radar could detect with ease, but a second plasma shutter descended from the heights of the sky, widening the overall defense system.

"What's this sorcery? Are Belkan using dark magic?" Razor five asked, his physical knowledge being a bit too deficient to understand where all of this was coming from.

"Magic is often unexplained science." Kupchenko specified, still evading his foe, arriving now quite close to the area where the bombers were, yet on the other side of the plasma shutter. He had been distracted for a second as the Merlin network was being activated, but now he was back into the heat of battle.

More Merlin satellite came to life, creating additional plasma shutter in mid-air, which were encroaching greatly on the cruise missiles' path. However, as they try to run toward the North, the bomber crews saw four pitch black flying wings taking off vertically, using rotors implemented in some cylindrical holes in their wings. And those Belkan Dunkle Wing didn't wait to attack their opponents. Each fired a volley of four ERAAMs. All of their missiles scored hit on the bombers, while the cruise missiles were exploding on the plasma shutter.

"VTOL DWs? And with ERAAMs? You surely update them since Directus." Iskanda huffed, seeing that in every corner of the battlefield the technological achievements of the Pendragon project were out-matching them.

"I did. Last time they were hindered by those dagger-shaped drones of another project. Not this time." Kupchenko whispered her thoughts of failures, as both of them were flying line astern, each of them carefully turning or accelerating similarly to evade becoming the prey in this fight. But both of them were skimming toward the remaining bombers.

"I don't care if we suffered some losses. Go through that wall of plasma!" A Yukte pilot ordered, hoping to outrun these DW-2s they had no chance fighting against. If they could fire their cruise missile on the other side of these plasma shutters, they might have a chance to hit Excalibur.

"Now these DW-2s are the true successors of the Me-110, our bomber hunters in the second Osean-Belkan conflict of this century. They downed hundreds of Osean and Yukte bombers." Kupchenko depicted, as these new heavy attackers were destroying the Osean and Yukte bombers in a matter of seconds.

"If our weaponry cannot go through those plasma shutters, maybe our planes can. If needed, crash on Excalibur!" White Bear leader agreed with the seemly nonsensical suggestion of his comrade.

The DW-2s let them fly through the ionized air. But they didn't go through it untouched. After all, it was like getting through a waterfall, yet with leptons replacing the water. From all around their craft, static electricity began to sparkle, while their radar, IFF identifier, ECM pods and chaff dispensers being soon out of commission. If they could have said anything, they would have surely said "radio failure" but they couldn't, since they were indeed submitted to radio failure. The slowed Blackjacks and Lancers were followed by the DW-2s, which had gained a bit of altitude before going through the plasma shutter, having closed all hatches and air intakes. They just glided through the electrically overloaded air. Even if a bit of static electricity began to sparkle around them, they did not sustain any damage. As such, they were able to radio between them this message, as they were out of the high EMI zone:

"Wiedereröffnung Waffenbays (Re-opening weapon bays). Feuer weiter (Continue Firing)!"

And again, sixteen bombers were downed. This was ludicrously easy for the Belkan manning the DW-2s, as their opponent were without any radars or defensive systems. Furthermore, with their afterburners being inoperable, the bombers had no chance in trying to outrun the high velocity ERAAMs.

"This can't be happening. Galm team, do something!" The Osean officer that was transmitting order from the GHQ screamed, horrified as more than thirty bombers were already down, and the two thirds of their fighters.

"Galm 1, engaging the DW-2s." Iskanda announced, after breaking the fight she was into by some erratic whirring and outclimbing her pursuer, as she possessed a tuned engine slightly more powerful than his.

She went for the one at the left of the four-plane formation, who was currently using its rotors to steer toward the rushing Yukte bombers with a smaller turn radius than flying wing usually possessed. She dived to evade the missiles the DW-2s fired at her as well as a SAAM from Kupchenko, and then zoomed in right on the right rotor. A short strafing run was enough to destroy it. Suddenly deprived of this lift generator, the Belkan flying wing began to tilt dangerously. Still zooming up, Iskanda climbed above it before plunging like a bird of prey on her target, aiming for the left rotor. The fragile carbon blades were finished by one missile, after Iskanda avoided their defensive ones by a tight barrel-roll, and the DW-2 began spiraling toward the ground. Then she went for the closest one, which had already downed another Tu-160, bringing the number of bombers to six. Of course, his pilot learned from the mistakes of his comrades, and quickly closed the small cylindrical hatches that would have given her an opening on his rotors. However, her attack pattern was quite similar, as she dived below the bigger craft, before raising on his tail section, where the SPK was located, avoiding by such tactics its fire. Thus, she ended up with this tail section in her crosshairs. She fired everything: two missiles, and her twin guns -when she knew from Nühmer that there was no possibility of inside flight here, she asked Steller to have her secondary gun back-. The tail was shaken dramatically by the shockwave, temporarily disabling its defensive armament.

But in the meantime, the two other DW-2s had brought the number of Yukte bomber to three, and the three lefts seemed to be slowly caught up by the Belkan Bomberzerstörer (Bomber destroyer). These two were gaining speed far too greatly to allow the Blackjack any escape. Furthermore, the Osean fighter numbers were dwindling even more, shrinking away their forces.

As such, she wasn't changing nor evening the odds here. Belka would suffer more losses, it was obvious. But Osean ones would always be more numerous. After all, they brought more planes than the defensive forces had. And no Su-47 of Gault squad had gone down. Sure, they suffered some hits, and some had stepped back a bit of the combat zone, with damage on their engine outlets, their ailerons or their canards, but at this distance they could fire with greater accuracy their SAAMs on the few remaining Ustian and Osean fighters. Only Gault 8 had to retreat after an Osean tried to ram him, with the Sapin members of Gault team resorting to an all-out fire when he realized the desperate tactics the Osean was pulling out. Two missiles and one SAAM were enough to blow the Typhoon sky high, but some burning parts of the EF-2000 impacted the Su-47. Still, he was able to land safely, their runway being surrounded by a very efficient laser defense system.

Galm 1 sealed the fate of the DW-2s in quite an original manner: falling on his tail after a quick climb, she fired again all she had at him. Yet this time the tail section was not just damaged, nor its weaponry put out of commission, this time the tail section was sectioned. In a massive burst, the two-meter-long part was separated from the craft. A pair of missiles impacting in the opening left led to a chain reaction that blow up the DW-2s from the inside. Only lingering black powder was remaining in the air after the flames died.

"Enjoy your meager victories, Galm 1. Du kann zurückziehen, Dunkle Falke drei und vier (you can step back, dark falcon 3 and 4)." Kupchenko sounded disdainful, as the two last DW-2s had just destroyed the last Tu-160s.

"Ver. Superstaustrahltriebwerk auf (scramjet on)." The Belkan pilot agreed, recognizing they had nothing to gain battling this little fly. After all it wasn't what they were intended to.

"Cowards!" Iskanda tossed, finding none other qualificative for those who run before their enemy.

"Es ist nicht Feigheit. Nur Sicherung meines Vermögenswerts (it's not cowardice. Just bringing my assets to safety)." Kupchenko countered, preferring to have tactical results than just blind glory his countrymen usually sought to obtain.

"They are using the only technical advantage you possessed once." Pixy spoke up, noticing that the DW-2s had reached a speed well above Mach 2.5.

"Eigentlich. Aber der Griffon wurde nutzlos hier (indeed but the Griffon would be useless here)." Kupchenko recognized, that if she had flown that old relic of the sixties, she would have only been splashed sooner due to its massive cross section -created by the steel-made structure-.

And to be fair, any allied aircraft seemed to be "nutzlos" here. No fighters had laid a single hit on the TFLS. No one seemed to be able to pull the sword out of the rock. If nukes had failed, and fighters were failing, what could? Fighters with nuclear missile maybe? But those concern about using nuclear armament would only reach a dead end: their use would be disastrous for the morale within the allied states. Belka had announced the truth behind the "EMP disaster" as the Osean journalists were calling this tremendous event, causing some protest within Osea, Yuktobania, from civilian having suffered what they consider to be useless losses that could have been easily avoided if they made sure they had space superiority. The worst was the anti-Osean protests among the Adaman Islands, which suffered some EMPs, as they were below the trajectory of some Yukte VRBM (Variable Range Ballistic Missile) launched by the Yukte submarines. They were growing by the day, and if The Adamans were not a threat to Osea's might, Osea wanted to avoid creating more enemies than allies in the end. As such, those types of aftermath should never happen again.

Yet here, there was not a single nuke needed to have a violent aftermath. Osean numbers dwindled even more after another failed saturation attack on Excalibur main laser:

"Belkan defenses are still too strong to land a single hit on Excalibur's main weapon." Crow 4 admitted, as he tried with three remaining EF-2000 to saturate its eight TLSs defending it from above, after half of the TLSs on the guard of the Sword were out of commission. However, it revealed to be a poor choice, as in this situation the eight lasers were able to fire upwards, alongside the TFLS. The three Typhoons were disintegrated in less time than it takes to say or to write it, while the fleeing F-16C was downed by the remaining TLSs positioned on the higher guard of the Sword.

"There's nothing to do against such power." Crow 1 was forced to concede, after he tried to attack the support on the small cylindrical platform between the two parts, along with four F-14Ds, but all of them ended up either shredded by the TLSs on the lower guard, or on the platform itself, or by RTLS that had been relocated to engage them, or in the case of Crow 1 himself, by a pair of SAAMs.

"This is Joker twelve, I'm going down!" The pilot pushed a scream of agony as the powerful high-caliber cannon of the ADFX-01 destroyed his canopy head-on.

The state of the Savage squadron wasn't good either. Their achievements were nothing but meager victories: surely the nine tenth of the solar panels had been destroyed, along with the majority of the self-propelled anti-air armament, and seven RTLS, but this loss of energy didn't seem to be minded by Excalibur servants. Indeed, the lasers on the Wunderwaffe were still firing at a somewhat high rate, intercepting nearly all weaponry thrown at them, and providing a strong anti-air artillery again the now outnumbered allied fighters.

"We have suffered some losses on the external generators. But the underground superconductor cables are untouched, so alles' gut Herr Sturmbannführer." The Belkan officer in charge of Excalibur power supply reported with a somewhat posed voice.

"This attack is doomed to fail. All fighters, retreat, retreat!" The GHQ officers transmitted, heartsick. Obviously Iskanda would not follow this order. She would fight to the end, trying to at least take down those Erbe that had almost destroyed all of their allied by now, and that were veering toward her, in order to support their leader. She had still two static FAEBs, but would it be enough against two sixth generation aircraft?

"I won't run. Not in face of evil." She stated firmly, pursuing Kupchenko as he was getting a bit more above the airbase at the North of Excalibur.

"Evil, angel, heroes, demons. These are abstract concepts. We are just men, fighting for some cause. History make heroes and villains." Pixy commented, managing to land some hits on the left engine of a Berkut, but at this moment the Belkan fighter slept between his finger like a soap he had got a grasp on, before letting it slip through his fingers. And he suffered some hits on both of his engines as retaliation. However even hit the Eagle would always be faster than the Berkut. As such Pixy was now skimming out of the area, with the few survivors. Some stragglers were still around Excalibur, not wishing to run, but their last stands were just vain efforts and recklessness, not bravery.

"Every Belkans are evil. They just deserve to be wiped out." An Osean pilot spoke, one of the stragglers, as he tried to rush toward Kupchenko, only to be wiped out by the main laser of Excalibur, which instantaneously detonate his fighter before turning to ashes the bail-outing pilot. Kupchenko evaded the fire easily, since he knew when and where it was firing in advance.

"Your point of view is irrelevant. What matters is who has power. And you haven't." Kupchenko retorted harshly, enjoying the view of the pilot being disintegrated. His pawns were slowly setting up. And soon not just their fighters would be disintegrated. Their will was going to fall, sooner or later. Then he would have his revenge.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 23/05/1995, 14:45, Weather: rough thunder.**

The weather was now getting thunderous. After all, it was expected, due to Excalibur fire messing with the static electricity in the air. Under heavy fire, the Allied fighters had retreated, but it was a last-ditch effort kind of retreat. Almost no one was covering each other, and as such they didn't outrun many of the SAAMs launched by the Gault squad. It was understandable, as all had suffered heavy hits caused by energy-based or conventional AA artillery, with some losing ailerons, wingtips, but there wasn't any new Solo Wing or worse No Wing in the retreating crafts. In the end, only Pixy and two F-16Cs, respectively Crow 2 and Savage 1 were getting out of the area, skimming over the small hills in the hope to escape direct fire from Excalibur.

"Du verlost, Eruseanerine." The Erbe callsign "Cipher" commented, as he was almost getting a clear lock on her fighter. She had come with FAEBs only, maybe mistakenly thinking that the Osean reinforcements could have handled the fighters. However, this kind of armament would be no use against his last ERAAM, from the point of view of Cipher, even if he knew what unconventional use she was making of her thermobaric ordnance. And to be honest, they should have brought enough planes to outnumber them by ten to one at least. However, this number not currently reachable due to Osea still dealing with the aftermath of the "EMP disaster" they created by themselves on themselves.

"As long as I'm in the air, I haven't lost!" She retorted with anger, at the moment in the six of Kupchenko, who despite the damage she inflicted to him was still highly mobile. His plane was definitely more resilient than hers. Each time she was fighting him she was hindered by the limitations of her prototype. Just for the sole reason of being a prototype it didn't receive any upgrades since its creation besides her little additions such as this secondary radar, but if it had maybe she could have carried more advanced weaponry in battle.

"Denn friss das. (then eat this)" The young Belkan pilot fired an ERAAM angrily, fed up by her astonishing survival against all odds. For him she should have been dead since their first encounter on B7R. Kupchenko let her live in a fit of pity. Or maybe his Meister had schemes for this war he wasn't understanding right now, like most of the time since he recruited them that day in Hoffnung.

Obviously, her missile alarm warned her only at the last moment, due to this kind of missile being quite stealthy despite having a very high velocity. It wasn't like some QAAMs that possess some re-lock capacities, and thus based on the fact that one plane would lost his mobility dodging one time the missile to ensure it would be successful in the second approach, these missile were designed to strike first and fast. If they were designed with such mind set, they were surely equipped with vector thrust in order to counter evasive maneuvers. Besides, her aircraft had already taken some hit from Kupchenko's gun and other AA fire, so putting more stress on its structure wouldn't be a good thing to do. The only question was: could this missile cross the shockwave from a FAEB unscathed? After all, it had been enough to take down a hypersonic missile during operation Juggernaut.

"You won't escape this time." Kupchenko tried to induce some fear in her, as the heavy-duty missile was on her way. It was now only at five hundred meters from her six. She dropped the static FAEB and flew at full speed forward, letting the missile trailing her go into a straight line toward her plane.

Five seconds later, the missile was caught in the explosion. Though her survival was only thanks to mere luck. Sometimes she asserted that she did not need luck in battle. But it was only for those times when she was facing conventional fighters not supported by otherworldly weaponry that they surely borrowed to some Death star. Iskanda authorized herself some relief and pulling up a head-to-tail maneuver, headed on the one hour of that Cipher pilot. She intended to cross his path and leave some warm Ustian gift on the intersection path. But the other Erbe had still some ERAAMs, and for this reason she would need to keep her weaponry. She couldn't use her FAEB offensively if she wanted to survive a bit longer. The X-29A and ADFX-01 fired at each other head-on, but without any success for any of their pilots

"Unexpected. But this is becoming annoying. Cipher, Amber plan." Gault 1 ordered to his subordinate, knowing one deadly weakness of the X-29A. That his Berkut shared for once, but not anymore. And he was sure that the likelihood that she would deduce the plan from his name was fairly low. Or maybe if she studied old languages, especially the etymology of electricity.

Henceforth, as she went in firing distance, he zoomed in, as if he wanted her to follow him. He had maybe the advantage of bigger engine and thus greater thrust, but she had a tuned engine and lighter craft that allowed her to balance the odds for this climb. Even if it was only a balance in velocity for now, and all odds were still against her. What odds could be better than being helpless and alone, and with a feeling of utter powerlessness after witnessing the full failure of her mission?

Yet, for an unknown reason, or maybe because he was following some secret schemes that she couldn't get a grasp on, he released something. It wasn't a static bomb, Kupchenko was creative enough not to copy her. Or at least if he did so he would surely equip his static armament with some Hypersthene or high-frequency laser. However, a detail caught her attention, a line that seemed like a very black lace linking the device to the fighter. And as she saw that this device was not dropped, but towed by the fighter, she began fearing for her safety. What could it be? A towed TLS, she thought maybe after reminding her foolish assumption she made just seconds ago. That seemed unlikely, or would have seemed to be very unlikely to her before this war, but coming from the Pendragon project everything was possible and the impossible was only something that would take them a bit more time than the usual stuff but seemed reachable.

"TEGS online." The fighter pilot she was pursuing announced, almost with some joy.

"What can it mean?" Iskanda wondered, but the response was quick to come, as she was trying to get a lock on the still-climbing ADFX-01. Her radar went crazy, and a turquoise color began to appear near the device towed by her prey. Apparently, a strong ECM unit. Nothing she couldn't shot down with gun at first hand. So, she speeded up toward the source of the EMIs.

"Behauptung der Spannung über Luft disruptives Feld (augmenting tension above air's disruptor field)." The Belkan pilot muttered some scientific idioms that Thesermeister would have surely understood with ease, and that she might have understood too if she paid a bit more attention in physics class -in which she only focus on things that could explode because it was funnier-.

But she quickly had the response handed over to her as she was getting in gun distance of the device that was hanging three hundred meters behind the Morgan. The turquoise blue surrounding it grew brighter, almost blinding her like she was looking at the sun, but it wasn't its main effect. No, its main effect was far more perverse and aimed toward aircraft needing absolutely numeric compensators for stable fight. Like her one was, for example. Soon she was able to sense her aircraft becoming more and more unstable, and after hearing one more "Behauptung", sparks began to emerge out of the electronics of her aircraft. Now she was understanding was TEGS meaning.

"I guess your new toy is a Towed Electromagnetic pulse Generator System, right?" She asked for confirmation, even if her radio was more and more filled with buzzing sound as the fuse protecting her onboard electronic systems were blowing one by one, filling her canopy with a strong smell of melted metal.

"It is. And when you will have lost everything on your craft, you will fall to your death that you have owned for surviving so far and hindering me so much. Any last word, Fraulein?" Kupchenko replied, as more and more static electricity was around her fighter. The fact that she was still resisting to the electric shocks induced inside her fighter were surely a testament to her strength and willpower, but the three computer she had onboard for the sake of redundancy wouldn't last that long. Even her belly radar was beginning to emit dark smoke and was surely inoperable by now. She was also climbing slowly due to the loss of all wire control, especially to her afterburners.

"At least, when Ulysses will strike at the Earth, you will be protected." She commented the only peaceful use such technological marvel could offer. But it was only the foolish idea of a woman hanging over a very deep precipice, that she once intended to rappel down, but some mad lad was burning the rope with a plasma torch.

"I haven't thought of that. I won't redirect asteroids at Directus, the city is nice, but against Oured I think you can count on me." He agreed that they had the power of changing the course of those debris, even if they were supposed to hit only the Usean and Annean continent. He had the power to do what he wanted, or almost. That was supposing that Excalibur would survive this far. And of course, he was seeing his project surviving, because Osea hadn't any efficient enough counter.

"Auf Wiedersehen. Bitte reserviert einigen Kessel in Hölle für alle deiner Oseaner Alliierten, Sie werden es brauchen. (goodbye, book some heaters in hell for all your Osean allies, they will need some)." Was all she could heard before her entire HUD and panel had only but red lines among them, and electric discharges were beginning to burn through her flightsuit, and a bit of heat was transmitted to her skin, causing her some small pain. She was quite surprised that her fuel tanks hadn't caught fire yet. Or maybe she used her afterburners so much that there wasn't that much fuel to burn now.

But her fate was sealed. A master caution alarm blared on her HUD as her three compensators were out of commission. Obviously, they were just dead due to the loss of all her fuses. As such, her canards ceased ensuring her roll stability, and she fell the second later, which relieved her a bit from the magnetic pulses, but it was too late. All on her fighter was offline. She was falling from three kilometers. She had more than one minute before her death, apparently. Hopefully the last FAEB she was carrying hadn't explode yet, or she would be no more than some moles of flying molecules by now.

"Du erkanntest nicht, dass du bist tot! (you didn't realize that you are tot)" The second Erbe exclaimed while firing her last two ERAAM, as the X-29A was only at two kilometers. It should hit her before she hit the ground, removing any likelihood to attempt a crash-landing. And above all, how could she crash-land over a forest without clear zones?

On a hunch, Iskanda released her last static FAEB, depriving Kupchenko and his subordinates from the spectacle of seeing her crash on the ground. The combined explosive powers of the FAEB and the two heavy-duty missiles were enough to blanket the sky. No chute was sighted due to the very bright explosion occurring at this moment. Survival was quite impossible, giving the conditions here. But he would have preferred to see her fighter exploding into pieces, or his chute burning and her with it. Being deprived of this little price frustrated him a bit, but the satisfaction of having destroyed so much Osean today was compensating it greatly.

"Do we need to launch a ZV operation?" Some subordinate in the facility asked to Kupchenko, as much for this Erusean merc than for all the other Osean pilots and flying officers.

"Kein Versuch und Verstorben (seek and kill) (abbreviated as ZV for Zwei V) Operation. Excalibur is not meant to leave survivors. Do me a Sitrep of our losses and begin listing our needs for the Hoffnung factories." Were the final words of Kupchenko, as he steered toward the runway at the North of Excalibur, rejoiced by this other victory on the allied forces. He was now wondering a bit what could be the allied forces' next move. They would not attack Excalibur right away without further data. But covering urban area or area of close dogfight while ensuring that no allied fighters deduced the area of impact that they usually transmit through phase modulation radio was going to be tricky to say the least, if they wanted to evade blue on blue. As such, the Pendragon project was not a total success now. But it would soon be.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 23/05/1995, 16:00, Weather: overcast.**

The back travel was not a really chatty one. They had lost the chat-boy of the Crow squadron after all, with Galm 2, Savage 1 and Crow 2 being the sole survivors of the forty aircraft formation. Besides, what could be the subject of their talk, with the exception of warning of Excalibur strikes on their radar. And obviously they made it through these Helligen Kolumne, but at a cost in time. As such, they had to be refueled at the bottom of the Valaisian Alps by a Sapin Rafale squadron nicknamed Tequila bar. Maybe at this moment Pixy would have wanted to get drunk with some real tequila, so he could forget how much of a disaster this mission was. He had suffered a loss at Directus, and had to mourn it a bit, but manage to overcome it in the end. He wasn't sure if he will survive this war, or not, especially after this disastrous week for the allied forces overall. This became the main subject after the debriefing made by that Perrault Osean officer.

"There is no such word to describe the mission than a plain disaster. All fighters were shot down by Excalibur, along with the bombers, and we have hidden this fact during the mission not to disturb you: no AE-6Bs nor MQ-9s we deployed to refuel you made it to Cranston. And we have still a good third of our aerial forces grounded due to the aftermath of the failed Yukte nuclear strikes. Now Belka think we are weak and their representative at the Assembly of Nation almost insinuated that we should stop fighting to count our losses or we would lose the count!" He finished on a very frustrated tone, quite angered by the venom this Belkan had spat on his country once more.

"And about Galm 1, what is her status?" Pixy asked, honestly thinking he would respond "K.I. A."

"Missing in Action. The Belkan didn't boast about her death, so we can have little hope she manage to survive there." Perrault replied, doing great efforts not to show his resentment about the B plan. If she had survived, she would enact it without reluctance, after witnessing such power of destruction. However, one thought struck his mind: what can a single man, or woman do, with only one shot? Not much. And thus, he didn't know if she would do enough to help the allied gained a well-needed victory. Just for the sake of troop and civilian morale they were in need of a victory, even a pyrrhic one.

"Still, we will not stop here. Allied forces will keep fighting Belka to the bitter end!" Savage 1 agreed that they would not let Belka get away with this.

"If we think about our attack, I think it looked like what could have happened if the Death Star has no heat vent and her defensive teams were only made of Tie Advanced. For once the small outsiders were destroyed by the well-entrenched Pendragon project soldiers." Crow 2 gave his mind on today's failure as they made it to the restroom, having been from hell to come back to this iced purgatory, without any detour to heaven. In all honesty he should just say through hell.

Pixy didn't even eat this evening. He only drank, trying to forget these fateful days. Who would fight for the Allied and for Ustio since all was now gone. Could they still win the war, he wondered. Distress caught him, but this time he shrugged it away. Mourning his leader for a second time would not bring her back. She would have wanted to keep the war running, but to which aim?

Then he reminded himself his words about victory. Victory does not last. And those about war: It's not fight on the battlefields nor in the skies, but in the heart of the ones that are fighting. To really end a war requires a push, an evolution in understanding. Yet, who could instigate this push? He could not know now, even if deep down he hoped he would know the answer before dying in another pointless battle.

 **End of chapter  
I guess this judgement just seem to be a misjudgment. Osea doesn't understand what's at hand yet.**  
 **Now I think I've definitely crossed the way back point. If it had been a game mission the objective would have only been "survive".**  
 **Like Pixy said, World need a push to change. Thus, I'm pushing it harder than it was ever pushed. I could say I'm making them face the Apocalypse, However, if we followed Christian mythology the Apocalypse is not the end of the world, but its reshaping.**  
 **And above all (after those flights of philosophy) will our cherished protagonist survive? What's death to her? (Or to you if you're getting ready for flight in philosophy)?  
Those new DWs are from another Blake and Mortimer, "Valley of Immortals". The satellites are inspired by the "zephyr" pseudo satellite of Airbus. I hope you like those new additions of military hardware. I might have some more in reserve, but not that much yet.  
Anyway feel free to comment, follow, promote.  
Und bis nächst Mal, ****Lesern** **und** **Leserinnen** **.**

 **21/1/2020: some grammatical fixing.**


	16. Wanderung 1

**Tauberg, Belka, 24/05/1995, 14:30, Weather: overcast.**

She survived. No, she asserted. She didn't survive. She only lived. She barely lived.

She remembered all of it. The burning smell of the air within her fighter. The terrific shock as she was shaken by the shockwaves. The burn on her arms caused by the current that had gone through her electrical system due to her blown fuses. She had chosen to eject toward the ground at this moment. Like Gelb 2 had felt the heat of his disintegrated leader, she felt the heat too. Her first parachute was hit by incandescent debris and began to burn. Bit of melted nylon fell on her, adding even more little burns to her slightly tanned skin.

Fear of dying became really strong at that moment, when she fell like a rock toward the ground. Furthermore, she didn't know if the explosion that was still lingering a bit was fully hiding her chute.

She felt a bit of relief when she landed after having deployed her secondary chute. Still, it was a hard landing, since her chute got stuck into trees, and as she tried to descend after extracting the under-siege compartment, she fell into the forest. The oak she fell from was at least more than ten meters high. Luckily for her some tree parts slowed her way down, but not without leaving a great number of bad bruises on all her body. She was glad she suffered no serious injuries, such as a sprained ankle or anything like that. At least all those new injuries would be a good reason to have new tattoos to hide them, she reasoned, trying to best her mood.

Walking in the forest wasn't that difficult. She preferred walking in the woods to keep her cover. Sure, the local inhabitants weren't equipped with laser armament to repel any intruder, but she wasn't willing to find herself in the crosshair of some shotgun or some old Mauser a Belkan farmer would have inherited from his grandparents. For an unknown reason there wasn't any Belkan patrol around Tauberg. Something was wrong here. But what, she couldn't tell.

Walking by night was a pleasant sight. The remains of Excalibur's effect on the ionosphere lingering in the sky could have almost make her believe she was in the arctic circle, in those far away cold countries such as Wellow or the kingdom of Nordennavik. Those artificial Northern lights were a fine addition to the Milky Way's small stars. In the end, from war art was created.

There was only at one point she encountered some difficulty in her travel, when she had to cross a little ten-meter-wide river. Of course, the case containing the weapon the Oseans handed to her was waterproof, but most of her gear wasn't. She emerged chilled from the water, and the fact that she kept walking until late in the night didn't help getting her dry. And sleeping in the cold Belkan nights without much to cover her and with her clothes half-soaked wasn't very healthy for obvious reasons. It would be a shame to die of pneumonia, after all, when she had only evaded death by disintegration one day ago.

Still, even with the survival rations, she was getting weaker. They were meant to give you the energy, but not all the vitamins needed. And there wasn't that much to eat in the woods of Belka in May. If she was in June maybe she would have found some wild strawberries. Furthermore, since she wasn't willing to be spotted by the farmers that had laid their fields between the small forests, she didn't try to steal anything from them. Maybe she could have tried. After all, she was wearing the Belkan-like uniform Pixy had given her, and not a greyish-blue Osean one.

Even the ultra-violet generator that allowed her to cleanse her water had not much battery left. Only two days more. She hoped than in two days she would have found those Oseans that were supposed to extract her. She was only wondering how much the back travel would take, especially if they had to do it by foot. How many glory days would slip away from her?

Yet now she wasn't walking anymore. She was right where she wanted to be. She had climbed a tree at the forest limit near the Belkan base at the North of Excalibur. The tree she climbed up had been hit by thunder, maybe due to the EMIs created by the Belkan Wunderwaffe. If it wasn't bearing any more leaves, and thus lowered her stealth, the lighting strike had created an almost flat surface of one meter in diameter when one very big branch had been ripped off by the thunderstroke. She had a perfect view on the two runways drawn on the ground in an open-scissor pattern.

Now she was maybe happier to attack from here than from the sky. She understood why no allied fighters had managed to score kills to retreating Gault squadron members. The runways were supplemented by three linear railways, each with one RTLS. And each hundred meters self-propelled anti-air defenses had been set.

She had set the given sniper rifle and its scope on a small section of the platform. Of course, if the recoil was too strong and kick her off the top of the tree she would baldly fall again. She had waited for the whole day to see Gault leader land and step down, as she saw him lifting off as she arrived on her observatory.

At one o'clock she saw from this point a Yukte taskforce being dealt with quite quickly. Yukte Flankers of all sorts could be seen, trying desperately to get hits on the Belkan Wunderwaffe. But like her tentative one day prior, it only resulted in utter failure. One by one, the Yukte were shot down, and the few that tried to flee to the East or West, she saw these DW-2s lifting off vertically and destroying them with great efficiency -with their very efficient ERAAMs it was easy-.

But now he was finally landing. Soon he would step down. She was following his aircraft taxiing on her scope. She could have fired on his craft, but she couldn't assert his OBOGS would save him from the poisoning or not.

A few dozen seconds later, helped by a small chute, the fighter finally stopped its forward motion. The canopy opened. If she could have seen his face, she would have surely seen a bright yet cold smile on his face. Osea was enacting the exact thing they shouldn't be doing. They should have used their industrial might to its greater extent. But they had underestimated Belkan achievement in technology. And all of their allies were paying the price now.

And now he was getting down his fighter. As he was climbing down on a ladder, she chose to fire. Maybe because of her anger, or of any other sentiments born out of her defeats: sorrow, grief, guilt, sadness and powerlessness, she missed him a bit. He was hit on his left shoulder. She saw him stumbled, then falling from the ladder and fell hard on the ground. His body was contorting in erratic manner, in the throes of the terrible poison. But like his opponent didn't get a chance to see her dead body laying in front of him, she couldn't confirm her kill. She would have liked to go there and plunge her harpoon down his throat to ensure her success, but the Pendragon project soldiers would not allow her such luxury. The Belkan soldiers around this place would not need a great amount of time to find where the shot came from.

So, she got down the tree as quick as possible. But not quick enough. She had only climbed down half of the oak when she saw its dead branches beginning to burn. One RTLS had already opened fire where she was standing a couple seconds ago. Some burning part fell from the top of the tree, only fostering her speed. She run as fast as she could when she got on the ground. The top of the tree was now burning like a torch, but not the whole tree. After all, it had already burned when the thunder stroke that tree seasons or years ago.

She didn't know when she stopped running. One hour after, or a few minutes, who could know?

And now she had to find those Osean infiltrators and get out of here. Even if by foot it would mean weeks to reach the ruins of Glatisant or even Ustio. After all, getting to Glatisant wasn't very useful: all choppers and VTOL craft the allied forces had parked there had been reduce to smithereens by Excalibur strikes almost a week ago. She was just hoping all could happen as expected from here, yet few missions had rarely been straightforward, without a hitch. What future was laying in front of her, she couldn't know either. But she would accept it. And fight for it.

 **North of the Schayne plains, Belka, 26/05/1995, 21:30, Weather: clear, few clouds.**

Osea hadn't attacked Excalibur since a few days. At least it was what she could think from having heard no fighters fighting each other over her head, and as such, the thunderous weather born of the EMIs created by the Belkan Wunderwaffe had ceased. And it was under a nice half-moon that she was approaching some clearing in the forest where she had heard a bit of noise.

Yet, the noise origin was definitely something she wasn't expecting. It wasn't sounding like human screams, but the living being that was suffering in this area seemed to be desperate. What could be waiting for her in those Belkan forest?

In the end, the noise source was indeed a living being. However, as she had foreseen, there was no man screaming there. But a wolfpack around a big grey wolf stuck in some wolf-trap. They looked a bit like the demonic beast the Galm emblem was bearing, especially in the night with the moon barely lighting the clearing through the forest coverage. The wild mammal was trying to get free and had surely bled from the clamp of the trap. Iskanda had never taken action for biodiversity and had maybe nothing against hunters to be honest. And she was not someone that could honestly question the cruelty of others, herself being capable of the worse thoughts the human brain could conceive toward her next one.

Still, she slowly approached the animals that were looking at her with angered eyes. For some unknown reason they did not try to bite her as she was closing the distance. Maybe the wolf was too tired of the trap he had been embedded into for too much time, but it wasn't explaining the unusual calm behavior of this wolfpack. She took her weapon. And fired.

The wolf-trap mechanism was blown up to pieces, and the beast was released. Again, the wild mammals didn't attack her when she was now quitting the clearing after having a look at the wounded wolf. He hadn't tried too much to get free, and as such wasn't that hurt from this trap. She had allowed what many mens were considering to be an old adversary of man to live. At least she could confess to Myriel she did one good act in this whole war, if she either come across the old bishop in this country thousands of kilometers away from here right now.

She realized just one slightly strange fact as she was leaving the area on a forest path: she saw Osean written on some half-destroyed piece of the wolf-trap. It meant the Osean she was seeking were maybe closer than expected. Yet, why would the Osean need to keep Belkan wolves away from them, when these ones hadn't shown any sign of clear aggressivity toward her? She had no answers at this moment. And she wasn't willing to have immediate answers either.

 **North of Schayne Plains, Belka, 26/05/1995, 22:30, Weather: clear.**

She had found the Osean camp. Still, she found something was amiss: they had some unexpectedly heavily armed sentinels, even if the area had been evacuated by Belkan soldiers. As such, and on a pure intuitive hunch, she decided to approach them without warning them, to understand what those Oseans were up to. She knew all Oseans weren't holding her in high esteem, especially since the operation Juggernaut to the incident with that Osean pilot, including the unkind talk between that major Perrault and Koenig. Yet, like with that encounter with Belkan wildlife, she hadn't foreseen what she was going to hear in any possible way.

"Sergeant Neelan, are we gonna wait for hours like this? It's getting cold!" An Osean commando soldier spoke up.

"Private Keeler, you know the drill. And you know what Weeker want us to do." The said sergeant Neelan replied unkindly.

"I know. But why do we have to wait here when we could just ambush her and empty some clips into her androgynous body?" Another commando team member added, not understanding was so much subtlety was needed.

"Yeah, we could have terminated her since some time." The soldier Keeler agreed with his fellow teammate

"Cuz' if we do that, the Belkan could identify our rounds and blame that death on us. Besides, before we killed her, we can play a bit if we catch her alive." The sergeant ended the talk, and the clearing went quiet once more, after some heavy laugh from the two other commando members with devious thoughts.

By now it didn't require to be a master tactician to understand that their intents were nothing but bad ones. This Weeker wanted her dead, that was a certainty. After all, Koenig had said after the operation Juggernaut that if some Osean were praising her for her achievements, some only want to get rid of that kind of mercs that think outside the box and care for something outside wealth. And she belonged to that kind, she knew it. He could have at least sent his marines to do the job, since she killed his sailors.

She analyzed the situation quickly: there was two scouts that were circling around the camp regularly, and one of the two had passed right beside her hiding spot without noticing her. Then there were those three soldiers she heard talking, and another one a bit further guarding the North of the clearing. The scouts would be the first she would have to care about. Hopefully she had approached them from the South, or she would have to worry with taking the sentinel and the scouts at the same time.

People in this moment could have felt remorse for what she was going to do. After all, they were her allies, officially speaking. Maybe saying they had been her allies was more exact... Informally she never cared that much for Osea. As such, she didn't feel any sadness when learning about the terrible aftermath of the EMP disaster. As such, nothing was holding back to do what needed to be done to ensure her safety. Using the barbs of her harpoon, she silently cut a piece of thorn in the bushes she was hiding.

She sneaked in toward the unfortunate Osean. He should have definitely looked for his surrounding, especially in such forest were moonlight wasn't very strong under the canopy. Furthermore, there were few leaves on the ground, unlike there would be in fall. As such she managed to get behind him without too much difficulty.

 **N/A: Here began the bloody part again. Skip to the next location "unknown place".**

Maybe he had felt some shift in the wind that was coming from behind. Or maybe he had finally heard her. But for him it was too late. As he drew his weapon, he felt something tight on his throat. And that tight thing was hurting him more than usual garotte wire would usually do. He could feel like little pikes being embedded in his skin as his unknown aggressor tighten her grip. He was about to strike with his elbow to try to break free when something changed the odds. One of the pikes of the thorn that was choking his throat pierced his jugular. As such, his death was even faster. And with his own blood filling his throat, he wasn't able to emit any scream to warn his teammates of this assassin that was now lurking around.

When he stopped moving his legs and arms erratically, she pulled him inside the bush she was hiding him. The pierced jugular was preventing her from checking his pulse, but due to the fact that the blood wasn't flowing that much of the terrible wound, she could see he was going to die soon. And the other scout that had run toward the place of the fight, as he heard a bit of noise, would follow him soon.

The scout had heard some deaf noise, like if someone tried to scream but couldn't. Uneasy, he switched on his light on his way. They weren't supposed to use them in order not to be seen. But what he saw frighten him. A pool of blood was spread on the ground, with foot marks printed in it. Whoever had hurt or worse, killed the other scout must have gone this way. Veering his torchlight toward the blooded footprint, he saw the legs of his fellow soldier. However, as he was moving his torch to see the rest of the now unanimated body, he felt something gliding on his collar. The aggressor of his teammate had gone the other way the footprints were heading to, thus making him mistaken on her position. He quickly went down, but the thing that he felt was now choking him and making him bleed from the neck. By sheer luck the part of the thorn that was pressuring his jugular had no pikes there. As such, he was able to grab his opponent arms and sent her flying above his dead. He quickly raised toward the dark silhouette with his gun ready.

Yet Iskanda wasn't exactly sent flat on her back. She indeed felt that sudden push but didn't fall. She rolled forward, before throwing her blade where she was standing, and where the Osean scout was now standing. The blade of the weapon missed his throat, but one of the barbs finished what the thorn hadn't accomplished. He shot but missed due to the great pain he was suffering, and that her opponent had moved. And she didn't miss her shot. A bullet from her Luger succeeded where his harpoon failed, going through his throat.

She closed the distance toward the bleeding soldier, whose mouth was only emitting incomprehensive gurgles. And pulled her weapon from his neck, which make him suffered quite a lot. She didn't hear him wail in pain, but his eyes cried enough to make it understandable. Yet she didn't show any sign of empathy toward the dying Osean.

"Thanks for intercepting my blade with your throat, otherwise I could have lost it." She tossed, looking at the once more bloodstained harpoon. Some people would have looked at it with horror. The reflect of the blood on the jade was definitely something beautiful to her eyes.

But those few shots had attracted the attention of the three other soldiers.

"Quick, we are attacked!" The sergeant broke the silence he had imposed.

"Other there!" Keeler noticed the torchlight of their now-fallen -and dead comrades, before a shot blow the device into pieces.

They ran toward the area, only to stumble on the body of their dead compatriots. Only the Private Keeler, that was a bit behind stopped when he saw then fall on the ground. But it was only to be shot by someone hiding into a hollow tree. The bullet cut the back of his left knee, and as he was stopped his run abruptly, he fell to the ground.

One bullet fired with haste on his nape ended his life. The other commando member that had fell to the ground met the same fate, with one bullet to his spine and another to the back of his head, as he was trying to stand up. The sergeant was faster to stand up, but as he stood up, he felt something tight on his throat. And this time Iskanda positioned herself below him, so he could not crouch down and do her an armlock.

Yet all of this had attracted the attention of the last soldier, who was watching at the North. Iskanda saw him carrying a heavy submachine gun. Her Luger with only one round left was no match for such weaponry. And there was little chance the hollow tree in which she ambushed those soldiers that tried to ambush her could withstand such high caliber.

So, she fired her last bullet as he was running toward her. By sheer luck, it hit his weapon in its magazine, exploding the high explosive gun round this commando member was using. The explosion acted like a heavy flash-bang. Enough to thrown him on the ground and slow his pace, but not enough to pierce his bulletproof vest. Yet, it gave her opponent, this damned Erusean mercenary, enough time to get close enough to engage him in CQC.

He thought he would have the upper hand, being taller and stronger than her. He tried to use his greater strength to catch her, but he was forced to recognize this ace was still agile even on the ground. The fact that she wasn't following any rules of any martial arts was quite disturbing. And surely it disturbed him greatly when she foot kicked him between the legs.

"Filthy merc!" He swore, as he fell due to the pain, but failed in catching her as he went down. He only scored another foot-kick into his elbow as she broke her leg free.

"You're as much. Just a weak man like your boss Weeker." She replied, and the next second tried to stab him in his spine but failed when he suddenly stood up. However, it was not a complete failure at first, as she managed to strike at his shoulder blade. Yet her blade was stuck due to the barbs, and she was a bit surprised when he rotated quickly, rendering her weapon out of reach, before he pistol-whipped her with his heavy gun.

"I despise your kind utterly. You think you can just do what you want because you're a so-called freelancer soldier? You're not above the rules. And I will teach you that the hard way!" He insulted her with all of the hatred he could assemble toward this woman who just slaughtered all of his commando team but him.

She had avoided a hit on the head but had badly fallen. She was almost knocked-out, finally taking the effect of this forced march she imposed on herself for those last three days. She was slowly drifting into unconsciousness. And him, he was laughing at the irony, as he took a step closer, and raised the rifle stock to strike at her once more. He would have ended this fearful merc that had killed so many Belkans and cause the death of dozens of Osean sailors. Furthermore, her failures at destroying Excalibur -to be fair, the EMP disaster, but this soldier's point of view was definitely biased- had caused the death of almost fifty thousand Oseans, military losses and civilian ones added.

Of course, she could not appreciate the irony. She had fought against so many opponents, and she was going to go down like this? Killed by a single soldier in the middle of literally nowhere? At least a death by some TLS, TFLS or any kind of tactical laser system would have been instantaneous. But this one was going to be painful and long.

Yet, something caused him to be reluctant. Not that he had any remorse finishing an already downed enemy and now an unconscious one of course. But some noise of broken branch and growls of animals closing and getting stronger did.

Iskanda wasn't sure by now if he had struck and if she was dead or dying shortly. She finally drifted into unconsciousness, but the last thing she heard were screams of pain. There were horrific screams of agony -of course they were horrific for the normally constituted person, but for Iskanda they sounded almost nice-. Was it scream of the damned ones that were welcoming her to hell, or screams of a real person? She hoped she would get the second answer if she either survived this very troubled night that saw allied turning on each other's because of one man that couldn't accept the price of wars.

 **Unknown place, Unknown country, Unknown realm, Unknown time, Weather: Unknown (that I guess you could figure it out).**

She was slowly standing with only plain darkness over her head. This was definitely not in the real world. No horizon line was in her field of sight. Or she was inside some building with a dark roof, dark walls, and without any sign of visible structure, either it was a metallic one, a wooden one or a one made of rocks.

When she rose at last, she saw a silhouette standing near some statue. At first glance she didn't recognize neither of both, but when she stepped closer, she realized what she was looking at. She was looking at her tormentor, Anton Kupchenko. And next to him was a smaller version of Excalibur. Which he pulled out of the rock without any issues. Its blaze was sheathed by a somewhat blueish field, maybe plasma.

"At last, you are here to face your sentence. Death." He claimed, as he walked forward her with the sword raised.

"You weren't the one to kill me, you know." She retorted with a bit of irony.

"Oh, you are speaking of that Osean soldier? He only terminated a vanquished enemy. But I crushed your will. Destroyed your hopes of victory. And now I will destroy your warrior spirit." He lunged forward with the Sword of the Kings, that she barely evaded.

She drew her weapon, only to cause this apparition to laugh at her.

"You're threatening me with a needle. This is not enough. It never was. And never will be." He jousted her verbally and literally, and then sliced diagonally. Foolishly she tried to block with her harpoon, this souvenir of her dead aunt. But when he ended with "never will be" the jade was shattered in a million of pieces. Her only birthright was truly and only the losses she suffered now, as Kupchenko had said three days ago.

"Go to hell, Eruseanerine!" He twirled his weapon backward, before striking at the ground. From the impact point, a crack appeared, that quickly grew into a wide rift. She tried to run away, but the rift was widening far too quickly. She tried to hang up on the limits of the slope, but a swift motion of the blade pushed her in the abyss. And after having fallen into unconsciousness, she fell into another abyss of darkness.

Each meter of the fall was a sufferance, like she was falling over sharp glasses or something like that. She tried to catch anything to stop her chute, but everything was just cutting edges that only hurt her even more. Her fall wasn't like if she had stalled in her fighter. She wasn't feeling the acceleration. She was only seeing her body get covered by even more wounds that she already had as she hit the slope of the rift.

And hitting its bottom was quite painful too. If she wasn't in an unconscious state, she would have surely lost her consciousness again. But what welcomed her in this so-called hell weren't people she wanted to see. The first was her breeder. This woman she only felt envy of murder toward her. Iskanda knew she had made the mistake of letting her live. But next time she would be in San Salvation, she would kill her for sure, even if it meant bomb their family house and as such a civilian target.

"Low born girl." She insulted her, quickly followed by the servant of Myriel:

"Unfaithful girl! Thief."

"Weak girl without any sense of honor." Was Weeker's insults, shown to her as a faceless Osean soldier with some stars on his uniform.

"We had faith in you. Yet you failed. Failure." The now-fallen members of Halo squad had come to harass her in this place too.

"I have said sufferance and pain is the only thing you would be allowed to feel." The voice of Anton Kupchenko seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"Now you will face death." He solemnly claimed.

A silhouette appeared amongst the insulting crowd, in a black cloak. Only skeleton hands and foots were visible out of her dark clothes. As she went closer, Iskanda could sense the heavy smell of rot corpses that this "Death" was emitting. The ferric smell of blood never disturbed her, but this… This was a horrific smell, like those giant carnivorous plant that reeked of rot flesh. And with her not just this smell came. A strong and cold wind came that made her entire being shiver. Yet she kept her will strong. She would not bow. The flame of her will would not be blown easily

"I ceased fearing death since I ceased fearing you, mother." She exclaimed proudly, causing her breeder's apparition to go quiet. Then she noticed that the apparition was still bleeding from her hand, like if this wound could not be healed.

"And about you, your master forgave me. Yet I will never change who I am. I am no Hero nor knight. Just a warrior." She repeated, facing the threatening crowd.

"You can strike if you want to, Death. But I won't kneel before you." Iskanda let go of her fear. If it was her last stand, she was going to make it last, even in this unreal place.

The Death raised her scythe. The cloaked figure was now laughing in a maniacal manner that should have sent chills to anyone's spine. But Iskanda wasn't just anyone. She didn't actually fear the Death itself, but the nothingness that came with it. To become nothing when you could be gone with glory on the battlefield was annoying for the mercenary, who like any of her kind wanted to reach a bit of fame before dying. Death taunted the now-slightly-scared Iskanda a last time:

"Your time on this earth is over, Galm 1. Go join the previous one." She struck, but surprisingly Iskanda lunged sideway forward, evading the scythes' motion. The next second she was trying to catch the arm of the silhouette but meet nothing to grasp. And the Death was slowly rotating leftward to regain the reach her weapon needed.

Even if all of this didn't seem to be real, and if she didn't know if her life was really at stake here, Iskanda caught the hilt of the Scythe and was now struggling with the energy of despair to take it from the owner. At least death wasn't a very strong opponent physically speaking. And after a few seconds of intense fight between the two pair of arms for the possession of the weapon, Iskanda managed to make it twirl, ripping it away from its rightful owner.

A strong push from the side of the weapon was enough to make the Death step back. However, this has caused the insulting crowd to close the distance toward our Erusean merc. And the crowd had now become threatening. Thus, she tried to strike at her nemesis and her tormentors of her past and present, but with few avails: they would fade away like eddies and materialize a bit further.

"Borrowing a power from someone else is never a good idea." The Death pointed out, laughing slightly in a maniacal manner.

She had taken advantage of the crowd of soul harassing Iskanda to get behind her. And suddenly, stretching a hand, she caused a cold wind to push Iskanda. This time, it was way more powerful. She fell flat on her back, and black thorns grew from the ground to maintain her in place. She had fought against fate, but in vain, apparently.

"Arrogant child. Do not defy what you cannot hope to defeat." The Death raised her scythe a second time. And this time, if the Death had eyes, Iskanda was sure she would have given her one hell of a death glare. She heard the scythe began its downward motion, as she closed her eyes by reflex. But when the scythe should have hit her and killed her undoubtedly, she felt nothing. Her skin didn't feel the wind current that striking at someone with such weapon would have cause. No, she only heard the metallic sound of two weapons clashing against each other.

When she opened her eyes, it was only to see a winged woman wearing white robes over a bright silver coat of mail standing next to her. So much white was contrasting with all her surroundings. Maybe light could still exist in her dark soul that shouldn't be containing any. And this white-clothed woman had blocked the scythe with a lance bearing the twin cross guard of Ste Victoire.

The second after her savior lunged against Death and pierced the hooded silhouette with her blade. The Death stepped back, apparently hurt. The pike of the strange lance had caused the dark fabric to melt all around the point of impact, like a match would have done if it had touched nylon. The light born of the hit was making this a bit weird, but they weren't in a real world. Everything was possible

"She belongs to me. All traitors belong to me." The Death argued, raising her scythe in a defensive posture.

"We both have our definition of treachery. You judged myself traitorous in my behavior back then." Her savior counter-argued, before trying to poke the black covered specter. And as a scythe is not the best defensive weapon, the Death was forced to step back even further, with more bright holes in her cloak. And with each hit the apparition seemed to become weaker.

"Besides, I don't fear you anymore. You made me know fear. But I have become this fear in the heart of my enemies." Iskanda said with a newly found strength in her voice, trying to get back up, with the thorn having vanished when the two apparitions began fighting each other. For an unknown reason, when she stood up, she found a lance with an intact jade harpoon as its spike laying at her side. Strengthening her hold on this new weapon, she joined her savior -which by now she had understood was some apparition of Sainte Victoire- in her assault against death.

"I am Fear incarnated. I am Death. You cannot beat me. I will always exist. Even stars die." The Death claimed, using a bit of reasoning against her adversaries, which were pushing her back.

"We won't defeat you forever, I know that. But we can win this fight if you believe in me. If you believe in Victory." Victoire retorted with a convinced voice. Her voice was definitely sounding old, but it was a good kind of old, the old one you would listen for advice when all hopes of victory is gone.

"Then I can say that through pain I have become a believer." Iskanda added, before moving forward with her lance hold tight alongside Victoire as the winged woman pierced the cloaked figure.

The small holes had look like if they were matches melting a plastic fabric cloak. But the combined weapon made the attack look like more a flamethrower than a match. Surrounded by flames, the Death was shivering, like the wick of a candle under too much wind. The dark of her cloak began to turn into a bright white, bit by bit, this illuminating the place even more. The darkness in Iskanda's soul was being drifted away by the flame of her will. The dark silhouette was now a bright fire, and Death was only screaming in ultrasonic as she was met with fear for the first time.

And then in a bright flash that looked like a heavy flash-bang, the apparition vanished. With her gone the dark place was illuminated again. Victoire took for a moment Iskanda's weapon, making the hilt disappear with a hand gesture, before handing it over to her rightful owner.

"Never let your weapon fall. You have a strong will, but it's not enough." Victoire reused the reasoning of the apparition of Kupchenko.

"Then what can I do?" Iskanda asked, open to any guidance that could ensure victory once she would return into the strange, real world she was fighting in and for.

"Let's have a walk, shall we? Idea are often clearer when people speak while walking." Victoire proposed her, before making the hilt of her own weapon disappear, before sheathing the blade into a hidden scabbard.

"I am open to any change. After all, one wise man once said that we're open to the greatest change when we are at our lowest." She agreed with Victoire. After all, what could she do? She has nothing to lose in doing so. Only something to win. Even if it's just a back-travel ticket to her world. Thus, they began walking into a white corridor ornamented with vines on the lowest and highest part of the walls

"I won't judge your methods, your fights, your choice you've made, the oaths you swore or your allegiance. They are yours. And only yours." Victoire began her explanation, before stopping before a balcony, where nothing but a nebulous fog was to be seen.

"Then what? My fate isn't yours to decide." She didn't want to have her choice made for her by anyone, even by an ancient wise woman.

"I said I'm not here to judge. I have made mistakes myself; my methods weren't much chivalrous than yours. And I did use questioning on some of my captives to extract what I wanted from their flesh. No, what I want to speak about is what you want to become? A simple number on an Osean report, the new Chronicles of your historical era? A name of mystery and hate? Or like me, a name that will be worshipped, feared and associate with greatness?" Victoire exposed some path that were open to Iskanda right now.

"I guess the third one is the most thrilling, to be honest." Iskanda huffed, feeling it to be the best she could hope to become, if she survived this war. And she had learned the hard way that wars never come with any guarantee of any kind. History had no continuity

"It's your choice. Good or bad I won't judge. Time will tell. Let's have a look at your futures perhaps?" She invited with a dapper gesture the young woman to look at the nebulous fog.

"My futures?" Iskanda repeated, emphasizing the "s" at futures. After all, this model hadn't absolute probability, would have said Herr Thesermeister if he hadn't become plasma and light.

"Yes. Your futures. Your choices are yours, but they can cause so much." Victoire answered the doubtful girl, who was now looking at the fog.

"There will be great wars. I see people trying to have you at their sides." Victoire described what she was seeing. Dozens of fighters were clashing, most of them unknown, or having strange shape in their fuselage to Iskanda's point of view. Some look like fighter of her era, but with strange ailerons, some were looking like a refined version of the ADFX-01. There were backward and forward-swept wing fighters alike, and even drones with strange wing surface. Missiles, explosions, shockwaves, plasma born of energy-based weapon filled the skies. But all of those aerial assets weren't the only ones to fight : it was a total war, with all army corps in it : the sea was set ablaze by the fuel of the sunken ship, with again, some of known design, and some weird double or triple hull shape, making them look like trimarans. The land was colored in red by the blood of the fallen troops.

Then she saw herself, older with her hair having turned grey, looking a bit more feminine, in the cockpit of a very strange fighter, who seemed to be flowing in the eddies, leaving a luminescent trace. To be strange, it was strange: without wings, ailerons, canards nor vectored nozzles, its long yet fine fuselage was reminding her more of a downhill kayak than a true fighter. This older self was smiling. Had she obtained victory, maybe?

"Or great catastrophes." She showed her gigantic explosions, leaving only cities in rubble, some were causing nuclear mushroom clouds to appear, other seemed to be caused by something falling from high, was it from space weaponry or asteroids? She had no answers.

"But I see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Some choice will grant you a bit of peace. Other won't." She kept describing what was being shown in front of them, with an Iskanda being either bedridden and disfigured by horrific scars, or on the very opposite, being at some point that seemed to be impossible right now : she was looking at the earth from afar, yet with tears in her eyes. Durable peace wasn't something any of her possible selves would encounter, apparently.

"We will meet again on the battlefields, Iskanda. Even in your darkest times. I will be your sword, your shield, your camouflage." Sainte Victoire promised, and then the winged woman in silver coat began to fade away, little by little.

"Does that mean I will have victory once again?" Iskanda desperately asked, looking for answers she deeply know she wouldn't get.

"Perhaps. See you on the battlefield, Iskanda Rayien." The woman finally faded away. And slowly, everything faded away too. Had all of this been real? No, obviously. But some bits of the future she saw seemed to be utterly real. And she could do nothing but agree she wanted to be remembered. But what path will she have to take? She couldn't know for sure by now. Maybe history would judge her. Yet winners write history. However, she had read in Pixy's notebook that winning a war was never easy. She would not try to end up in the winning side if it was easy anyway.

 **North of Schayne Plains, Belka, 27/05/1995, 02:00, Weather: little nocturnal fog.**

Iskanda suddenly woke up from this unusual, and almost paradoxical dream. But time of dream was called paradoxical slumber after all. As such, having unorthodox and apparently incomprehensive dream was something to be expected.

Curiously, she wasn't laying on the ground, but on what seemed to be a mattress with fur coverage. That was weird to say the least. This strange bed in which she was sleeping in was quite warm, but the blanket seemed to be a bit heavy, because she had trouble moving or rotating within it. She didn't know what had happened to the Osean soldier. No remains of him was visible in this pitch-black night, as the moon was hidden by the forest canopy and the light fog. The artificial Northern lights intensity had greatly decreased. It meant Osea hadn't attack during her sleep.

She could have thought her dream was not finished. She was still in a very dark place, with no means of analyzing her surroundings. If this was the afterlife, it was better than hell. The only issue was the loneliness and the darkness around her. Both were frightening and ensuring: she was alone, which meant without help from any men or women, but also without anyone threatening her. And it was definitely better than hell because the warmth wasn't coming from flames but from the fur covering her. At some moment she could have believed the blanket had moved, but she was too tired to assess anything properly. There was just some lingering smell that remind her of a masculine forest perfume she tried in Directus but didn't buy when she saw the price: more than she earned on the battlefield when taking back the city. A few minutes later, overcame by tiredness, she fell asleep, this time without a single inch of paradoxical slumber.

 **North of Schayne Plains, Belka, 27/05/1995, 06:15, Weather: clear with high altitude stratus.**

The rising sun was slowly awakening Iskanda. Unlike the penultimate nights slept on the forest floor, this one had been quite comfortable to her. This fur mattress was maybe a bit hard at some point, but at least she had a warm night, when she spent the other shivering in the Belkan cold. She stretched a bit her arms, rubbed her eyes, and finally opened them.

She thought maybe someone would have found her and dragged her to some house, hence could be a plausible explanation for the slightly hard mattress. Or that she fell asleep on some area covered in moss. But both couldn't explain the slight move that she felt in times of semi-slumber. Nor the warmth that had separated from the cold Belkan night she had endured until now. And if the forest had a bit of wooden scent in the air, the perfume she smelled during the night and was still smelling now was more of heavy musk than light wooden scent. It was almost if she had taken a bath with that perfume instead of using soap. And the smell of musk should have put her on that road.

No man nor woman were around her or had taken care of her. No, not at all. But grey wolves. For an unknown reason, they had kept her warm in the middle of the night, when such beast should fear or at least rarely approach man for obvious reason. At least it was the case in Erusea, she had rarely seen wolves from this close, the closest one she saw, it was during a survival stage in a wooden area. But maybe Belkan wolves were different somehow. They were already pretty spread out when she stood up. She walked slowly, tired from the fight of yesterday, and the prolonged walk until now. As she looked at the different wolves, who differed slightly in size of ears, tail, or in fur color, she found one with a light injury on his left forward paw. The same wolf she freed yesterday had stuck into a wolf-trap.

"Maybe you're more selfless than humans. lupus homini homo I guess." Iskanda said out loud, inverting the proverb, knowing she had few chances of being heard speaking alone if the nearest living being were only a pack of grey wolves.

But as she ventured around the clearing, she found the body of the Osean that knocked her out the night before. Now she understood what those were screams of agony she heard while drifting into unconsciousness. He had grievous wounds on all his body, mainly claws and bites marks. His face was petrified with horror, or what was left of him. Maybe half of him had been eaten by the wolves. What would remain of him would be a dismembered skeleton, his torn-off uniform and his military plates. But why did they attack him especially? Just because they set some wolf-traps? This kind of aggressivity from wildlife that in the same time had almost been kind toward her was not something she was able to process right now.

Maybe some Belkan do some experiments on pheromones and create obedient wolves they would use to kill any allied pilots that would bail out over Belka. But this theory wasn't making any sense, or not much. First, why did they spare her if they were conceived to kill any allied soldier? And second, if the wood were so dangerous, why did the Oseans sent soldiers this way, if they were aware of such kind of danger? She just hoped Kupchenko's Pendragon Project was only aiming at creating giant laser, and not biologically modified weapons. Such thing would be surely considered as a breach of ethics, but did such man care for ethics? She didn't much, so anything was possible with such determined man.

She then wondered what to do. She has nowhere to go, especially with the Osean now all dead. And of course, none of them had means of contacting the allied forces. Would it be good for her to call them anyway? What would she tell them?

"Hello, I just killed all of your soldiers because I heard some Weakling wanted me dead and let the wolves feed on the last one." was definitely not something to say to those Oseans that had not very kind relation with the Ustians. What was even left of the Ustian army? She knew Pixy and one Crow pilot had survived when she engaged the Erben von Kupchenko, but they could have died in other operations since.

She pulled her blade out of the shoulder blade of that Osean soldier. He truly suffered when dying, if his face was that scarred and deformed. Maybe it would have been better for him that she just killed him in CQC. At least he would have had a quick death. But she had never authorized herself to feel mercy, because she never had any.

Sadly for her, her theory was almost asserted when she chose to follow the wolves on their path toward an unknown aim. On some clearing such as the one where she fought those Oseans, she found makeshift tomb for Osean soldiers. One of them had the remain of a dead wolf as ornament. Those wolves had definitely killed Osean soldier on purpose. Maybe this was the reason the forest around Tauberg did not need any overwatch from the Belkan military. Why resorting to intense seeking parties for potential Osean spies when some wolves could murder them in the night? But again, she had no idea why they spared her. Because she saved one of them? It did not seem a reason valuable enough for her, but she was glad she was now alive.

However, if she was alive, that soldier had broken the ultrasonic sanitizer she hoped to use scarcely to obtain a bit of pure water. And her food reserve was not very high either. She had indeed calculated in biology class than humans could survive quite some time on their reserve of fat and muscle, but she had not that much fat, and wasn't planning on losing all her muscle mass to survive. Or she would be as fine as her chute when she would finally arrive at the allied frontline

The solution came to her a bit later, when the wolves she was following a bit slow due to her tiredness went slow suddenly. Then they run as suddenly as their stop was. Running behind them in that state wasn't good for her. They were lower than her, and as such, went often in paths she had not that much mobility in, or only get some bruise from thorns or over thorny plants. They weren't following walking path, but small and narrow forest path, filled with holes and moving rocks. Her lungs were not in fire because the weather in the morning had warmed a bit, but it seemed they were twice smaller than usual. Her feet were burning, and she was sure she evaded closely a sprained ankle one or two time in that run. How many times this run last, she didn't know. Minutes or hours. She thought she had good stamina, but in stadium, not in irregular cross in the middle of the woods with the lights shoes she was wearing to be at ease in prolonged fly.

And finally, when they stopped, the effort had been so sudden for her who had already walk for half a week already that she was about to pass out, hearing only the frantic beat of her heart. She wasn't even hearing the wolves growling anymore. Her vision became blurry for maybe a half minute, now she understood what that bomber pilot meant when he was speaking about ophthalmic migraines. Yet when she opened her eyes, it was to see the wolves feeding on the deer they had pursued. They had killed him by numerous bites on arteries. Blood was spread on the ground, coloring some fallen green leaves. She had never tasted deer nor any meat out of venison. Obviously, such meat would have never been allowed for her when she lived in San Salvation, and this kind of food was not something she would expect in a convent for the diner or in school mess at the midday pause.

"It's ironic I once said to that Rot 1 wolves feed on raw flesh. Because they really do. But I'm not intending in doing so." She spoke out once again. Hopefully she reminded some of her lessons about survival she learned in that stage in the EAF (Erusean Air Force). Like, how to make fire -and not with rocks, because, if finding flint is not that hard, finding some iron-rich mineral to do fire with the flint was sometimes hard-. By luck there was some dry moss on some dead trees. Her harpoon and a flat root she saw surfacing nearby would be a good beginning to have a bit of fire. She knew that doing fire through this method wasn't a fast one.

After almost a good quarter of hour, some wounds due to the barbs of her harpoon, and quite a lot of tries, she finally managed to obtain some fire by making spin the pike of her harpoon on the dry moss. And by fire, she was meaning to make the moss fume a bit. It took her another good fifteen minutes to obtain some true fire. Fortunately, there was a bit of slate in the area. A clean slate was her dish for today, after she cut a bit of meat on the dead deer.

Again, she was a bit startled that the wolves weren't afraid of the fire. All wildlife fear fire, they told her in that survival stage. And now she was guessing that normality had to stop at the Belkan borders, because she was shot down by an abnormal super laser like anything else. The meat was definitely harder than usual, maybe this deer was an old one. But she resigned herself to eat it, it was surely the only form of meal she would have before a long time.

 **North-East of Schayne Plains, Belka, 29/05/1995, 13:00, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

Now she had been following those wolves for two days. She had stopped dithering about the heavy smell of musk that had impregnated her clothes. And also, about the meat she had to eat. At least she found some plants that had leaves who could add a bit of taste to this venison.

But right now, they were venturing through some hills, after having walked at the bottom of some cliff were a small water stream was flowing at the middle of the said cliff. At least she had finally a bit of clearer water than the one flowing in the small creeks flowing across the woods toward the Tau. Behind the stream there seemed to be a small cave, yet she could have sworn this cave entrance was a bit too regular to be natural. She hadn't seen this cliff from the sky nor the stream, yet it was understandable, as she went on the anti-air base at the North-West, and if her sense of direction was right, she was at the North-East of the Schayne Plains.

A few dozen minutes of ascending, climbing and walking on narrow path where she almost fell once or twice into the nearby bushes filled of thorns and pikes, they were met by a heavy metallic door well camouflaged in the stone. Under a smaller metallic plate covered by moss was an old mechanical lock. Each axis was for a letter. And there were six axes.

"Well, twenty-six to six must give a number of possibility way above the million Maybe something close to some hundred million. And unlike Thesermeister I'm not good in probability." Iskanda judged the few chances she had to find the code of this apparently forgotten bunker. Of course, no hinges were visible on the metallic door. Furthermore, given the very deaf sound it produced when she knocked it a bit with her hand, this bunker armored door was at least twenty centimeters thick of hard steel. Even acetylene torch would be useless with such thickness, and above all using such tool could damage the opening system by melting inner components or deforming them.

She looked methodically all around the door, but no weakness was visible either. The rock face was not featuring any imperfections that could have hidden some opening mechanism. And trying to go around it to enter in the cave below the stream seemed to be very unlikely and dangerous, as the rock face had been flattened by mechanical means, rendering any climb of it nearly impossible.

And as she was coming back from the flattened edge of the cliff, she was a bit surprised that the wolves that had followed her almost in front of this gate weren't there anymore. She looked around, but no one was visible, not in the narrow paths around the rock face, nor hidden in some nearby bushes or small groves. But she spotted a bit of their grey fur on some thorns that were hiding a big hole from which growls could be heard.

"Well, guess I will have to do a bit of gardening before following you down there." She said while looking at the thorn bush and at her already bruised forearms who had dozens of small cuts by now, which she got by falls or when following the wolfpack on unclean narrow forest path. Soon she would have a net of new skin, slightly less colored than her mid-tanned natural skin.

Five minutes after, she crawled inside, with the heavy smell of musk getting stronger in this tunnel. She could guess they had yet to discover VMC. Some meters were hard, but since a human and a wolf on four legs were approximately the same size in height, she progressed in the burrow without any issues, other than piece of rocks scratching her skin, or a bit of dirt falling in her hairs. Nothing she would not survive anyway.

After a dozen meter of speleology, she arrived in some kind of natural cave. It had to be in limestone, as she sighted the stalagmite and stalactite -some guide during that survival stage actually said her the difference between both, but right now she couldn't remember it- slightly illuminated by the very faded light from the outside. A bit of water was on the ground, with some wolves drinking it from little ponds were the maybe slightly more acid water pierced the stone through the centuries. Still, a strange spectacle was welcoming her: a bunch of wolf cub were sleeping on some dry rock, near a wolf she hadn't seen in the last couple of day.

"Nice place for setting the nursery I guess." She described the calm place, well hidden from the only thing wolf could fear: men.

Still, she noticed one more thing. The water on one side was a bit warm. Way warmer than water should be in caves, usually it should be around less than twenty -surely cold enough to hurt Pixy cold-sensitivity-, but here it was like a comfortable thirty centigrade. At least this place was surely a bit warmer in Winter. Yet this was intriguing her. She walked toward the origin of this surprisingly warm water, which was hidden in the shadow. It wasn't coming from a simple cracks or stalactite. But from a fairly large slanted, almost vertical passageway, slowly flowing on the slope of the karst face. A man could have stand in, but it was surely not possible to climb for a four-legged mammal such as those wolves which had assumed this place as their own.

Going upward with few places to use as climbing holds was not easy, especially with all that water slowly coming from somewhere higher. At least, since the water was drifting slowly, it meant that the slope was not very stiff. One or two times, she was almost stuck, but manage to unstick herself by rotating. But the passageway was getting thinner and thinner, obliging Iskanda to crawl with her arms outstretched before her. And obviously she hurt her fine hands of pilots that were more used to the manning of aircraft systems than speleology. Yet, what she found when finally crawl out of this thine rocky pipe was worth it. It was definitely worth it, and way above the little worthiness of the Oseans she killed now two days ago.

 **Unknown bunker, North-East of Schayne Plains, Belka, 29/05/1995, 14:00.**

She arrived in another room, which look like some tomb, as the only thing she could perceive was a big parallelepipedal shape made of concrete. It was a bit close to a sarcophagus, but it was a bit too warm to be such cold stone meant to contain the bodies of the deceased. A strange light seemed to be coming from the other side of this concrete structure.

A bit puzzled by the warmth coming from what should be a cold tomb, and by some noise that she thought could come from insects, even if it sounded like a low electric buzzing. She walked around the big block of thick concrete, still hearing this buzzing. Then she saw the source of light she had spotted right before. It was a small red lamp, maybe the people who designed that place chose this color not to harm the eyes of anyone who would come in. Few things were made visible by this pale reddish light, only a two-way commutator to be precise. As she could have expected it, it was written in Belkan. Now she was really glad her instructor in Farbanti was a former Belkan, which enable her in this moment to read and understand the letters on that switch.

"It's on Zu, and the other position is Auf. Since aufmachen means open but is often reduced to auf, I guess I should put in on Auf." She reasoned this simple linguistic challenge.

A bit more of electric as well as hydraulic noise was heard when she turned the switch. Then rays of small reddish diodes came to life on the ceiling. This allow her to see the corridor in front of her, who was giving access to a small staircase. She chose to go downward first. As she was walking, the diodes changed the light they were emitting to a bright white. But as she had some time to adapt with the red light, her eyes weren't harmed that much. Yet this sudden change of light color allowed her to see something she hadn't notice on the concrete mass. It was a very easily recognizable sign: the circular black and yellow sign of radiation. Apparently, what was producing the electricity here was running on atomic energy. The water seemed not to be radioactive, or the wolves wouldn't have stayed here. Maybe it was only heated by simple heat transfer from the concrete that was a bit warm when she touched it. Still, this worried her and surprised her in the same time. She had thought that nuclear engine were only huge thingies only for submarines or carriers. But it seemed Belkan scientist had found some ways to shrink it down.

The downward path did not reveal any secret base, nor secret tech or anything otherworldly armament the Pendragon Project could have hidden in such a remote location. No, she only found other big mass of concrete. She thought for an instant they could be back-up generators for this secret place, but it was quite the opposite. Instead, they were what Iskanda had thought seeing in the first concrete block: tombs. Two tombs that blue light illuminated when she stepped in the room a bit more forward. Thus, she was able to see the name of the people buried here.

"Krysta Kupchenko, 1950-1990. Elana Kupchenko, 1975-1990." She read the name of the deceased ones laying there. So, there was the tomb of the deformed and scarred body and an empty one apparently, if Kupchenko's daughter was still MIA. Even if by now the body had been surely turned into a skeleton, Kupchenko said they had been murdered in atrocious ways. So, she didn't search to open the tomb to verify his wife's body state. Even if she didn't respect their only living relative that she knew, she would at least respect their eternal slumber.

Instead, she focused more on the epitaph a bit higher above the tombs, written in dark red, almost bloody red, on a marble plate. Of course, it was in Belkan, but the message it contained was quite simple.

"Mögen Sie in Frieden ruhen. (may you rest in peace)

Mögen Ihre Henker Niemals. (But your tormentors never)." This was the solemn epitaph that was written. Strangely nothing was written about a will of seeking his missing child. Maybe Kupchenko had already searched, but without getting anything. This could also explain why he chose some of his Gault squadron members to be his Erben (heir). Of course, it was just an assumption.

A second, maybe less solemn and more passionate was written above, carved into the rock with anger "Brennt Osea Nieder" (burn Osea to the ground). Maybe she would try to do the same if she had suffered the same losses and in similar ways. Besides, he had already burned a bit of the Osean territory by now, especially with the violent fire caused by the EMP disaster as a result of the Merlin satellites disabling Yukte nukes on their trajectory toward Belka, yet above allied territory.

"I'm sure you can count on your husband to fulfill this last wish." Iskanda chuckled as she left the room. Osea had been wounded deep in his territory with this disaster. And wounded beasts were often the more dangerous one, as they tend to act erratically and do more harm to their surrounding and even allies sometimes than to their true enemies.

There was nothing else to be found at this level than those tombs, so she chose to go up instead. She hadn't expected to find flowers here, she could difficulty picture Kupchenko coming here to flower those tombs. The only thing he would likely bring to decorate this place would be a half burned Osean flag taken on some fortress of his enemies. At least that would be good with the "Burn Osea to the ground". The generator was still buzzing at his place when she was going up on the staircase. After all, if it was here for five years there was no reason why it couldn't work for one day or two. And she had read in some scientific magazine that some of the longue range space probe mankind had launched since now twenty years were still up and running on atomic generators.

The next floor was definitively something she had expected more to see in that kind of secret bunker: a small lounge with a bed that hadn't be remade in years, a small bathroom and a little kitchen-like space. Of course, the few foods she found in the latter were only dry fruits and other dehydrated thingies, but it would complete her venison regime she underwent for the last couple of days. She enjoyed having found those means of subsistence, but nothing could have rejoiced her more than what she was about to find.

This small living area was prolonged into a small corridor that go straight or on her left. Inspired by the demon of curiosity, she chose to go left first. She only met the other side of the heavy metallic door that blocked her a bit sooner. And it had the same six letter lock. On a pure hunch, she decided to try Kupchenko's defunct wife's name, Krysta. Slowly, she aligned the letters in a right and high order. To her greater satisfaction, it worked, but she could only push the door a bit, this coming from the door having no mechanized system to help move their gargantuan weight. Still, the flow of fresh air in this closed space was something good to feel on her skin. She looked a bit at the forest from the entrance of this bunker which was overlooking it. Pixy was right, there was not so much differences between Ustio and Belka, after all, if we judged only on sight.

Yet she hadn't found nothing valuable -she didn't consider the tomb of the relatives of her nemesis to have any value to her right now-. So, she headed back inside, and kept walking in the corridor. She only walked for twenty seconds or so before the corridor grew into a big hangar that was finished by another metallic door that seemed to possess some mechanized opening system. For a strange reason, she could hear some flow of water from over this room, like if she was under some river. Maybe this room was near the water stream she saw sooner on the outside of this hill. Still, the most mysterious elements of this room were the big white piece of fabric that were covering what seemed to be fighter jets, as she saw their tires. Those white pieces of fabric half-turned yellow through time reminded her of the Griffon Steller had lent her for her first two missions.

Again, inspired by her curiosity, she pulled the tissue out, revealing a first fighter. It was an old F4-E II with a paintjob way too old to be identifiable. The paint was gone on half the fuselage, leaving only a grey and white fighter. Some other tissue pulled revealed the piece of what seemed to be the pieces of an ultralight plane. She wasn't understanding the usefulness of such a plane in modern warfare. It was maybe a little cheaper to use for discretion than stealth ones but was far too fragile for her to see any use of this kind of plane. Then the third one was what caused her to startle a bit, confused. It was a Su-47 with a Vantablack camo, this artificial color Pixy used to describe the darker than pitch black camo of the DW-1s and DW-2s. Unlike the F-4E it seemed far newer. Maybe it could even fly, she thought. And with that kind of color, she wouldn't need to paint it once more. Only some Belkan low observation roundels were visible on its rear fuselage. If she was on a black op, it would be always better to use an enemy plane conceived for such ops.

Finding a nearby ladder, she managed to climb near its cockpit, trying to see if the ones that abandoned this place emptied it or not from its flight component. The answer was definitely a no. Everything seemed to be in its right place, and there was no sign of dust from the inside of the fighter. Pushing the emergency opening button around the canopy, she caused it to open in her direction, causing her ladder to fell. Luckily, she didn't fall from very high, and as she saw it coming, she didn't fall flat on her back either.

So, she climbed in it from the other side, and try to study a bit its cockpit that was a lot different than the one of a X-29A. Of course, the HUD was at the same place, and like all modern fighters, it had HOTAS flight control, but everything seemed to be a generation ahead of her old prototype. There was so much more informatics, will it be for the radar -which was poorly integrated on the X-29A due to the aircraft no being intended to be a combat fighter at first- or the weapon management system. Now she was beginning to understand how Kupchenko could best her in such a high-tier plane. But now she had a plan to get back on the battlefield. And finally taste the sweet victory once again.

In order to do that, she would have to do a bit of maintenance. Finally, hanging out with the mechanics in Farbanti instead of her fellow pilots would reveal to be useful. If a bit of electronic wasn't working, she could always take some part on the fourth aircraft she discovered in this place, who was an old Su-25. She only knew Yuktobania and some other Socialist or Communist countries were still using this craft, but it was slowly replaced by the Su-32. But maybe having older airplane with less electronics could be better when up against EMIs.

The last thing she noticed as she began looking at the vectored nozzles of the Su-47 was a strange marking, which was barely visible on the Vantablack camo. On the lower fuselage between the two separated engines was a low visibility marking made of infinity symbols and arrows. It was made of a streak of three upward arrows, then an infinity symbol and three more upward arrows. Surely, Thesermeister could have decipher that kind of mathematical symbol. But this was definitively something she had never heard about. Maybe it was referring to an astronomical number of kills the former pilot of that aircraft obtained, hence the infinity, but the arrows had no meaning to her. Still, it was fitting for her. Her kill count was quite high, even if since the last two mission her exchange ratio had dropped a bit. Yet she wasn't planning on being shot down once more. Not ever again.

 **End of chapter.**

 **I'm finding it difficult to write those chapters without aerial combat, but I cannot just write missions after missions without anything between then, especially after what happened in the last one. By the way** **Wanderung** **come from** **wandern** **, which is the equivalent of to wander.  
So yeah, she had some bad words with the Oseans… Well of course, a bit more than bad words. She did hit Gault 1, but no weapon is perfect, even HCN (hydrogen cyanide in chemical symbols).**

 **I try to put a bit of "Hoth scene with Obi-wan" in this chapter, if you know what I mean with the entire section in this "Unknown place in an Unknown time." I let you try to find what this final symbol mean. It's quite a high number, but since the sum of integer equals minus one twelfth, I will say that in this matter look can be deceiving. I wish good luck for Pixy on the next one, because he's going alone next time or maybe not…Anyway, feel free to review, comment, and so on.**

 **Bis nächst mal,** **Lesern** **und** **Leserinnen** **.**

 **22/01/2020: some grammatical fixing.**


	17. Chapter 10: Operation BattleAxe 1

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 30/05/1995, 13:00, Weather: clear with high stratus.**

May had been a complicated month for the allied forces. It began with the victories in the retaking of Solis Ortus, Wesson and Directus, and the taking of Lumen. But with the assault on Glatisant the streak of allied victories had ended in a bloodbath. Loss on the Belkan side had been quite high though, but nothing compared to the ones the allies suffered. Excalibur could have been now pictured as a sword given by the lady of the Lake, but this Lake could have been filled by the blood the Wunderwaffe had spread over the battlefields. From a sword given by magic beings and almost seen as pure, as an instrument of unity and salvation, it had been perverted by its current user into an instrument of utter destruction and mass murder, that could only come from Hell. After all, it was producing "Helligen Kolumne".

Valais Air Base had been quite quiet since the failed attempt at destroying Excalibur. Sometimes they would do a bit of night CAP over the mountain range, trying to see any Dunkle Wing that could try to sneak around during the night. They knew some of them had been harassing the scattered Osean troops amongst the ruins of Mt Ivrea, helped by the Belkan remnants of the Glatisant soldiers.

Besides, the few survivors of the onslaught were barely talking about it, evading the subject like the plague. Pixy had asked the mechanics to paint the two wingtips of his aircraft in crimson red, as a remembrance for the loss of his two leaders. He wasn't the only one to paint a bit of his aircraft in this color. Savage 1 replaced the grey stripes by this color, as well as Crow 2 who chose to have red wingtips too.

The only thing that took a bit of Pixy's unused time and pulled him out of boredom was a very worried call from the elder sister of his now fallen AWACS operator, Magdalena Johnson. During long minutes, she asked him all he saw of the final minutes of his brother's plane, with Pixy recalling the words of Koenig " I prefer to suffer hypoxia or hypothermia than hyperthermia because of some super laser.". Man could survive hypoxia and hypothermia, he pointed out, this giving Maggie a bit of hope concerning the fate of his brother and the uncle of her daughter who were as worried as her mother. Still, Pixy couldn't help but notice the slight sound of guilt that was mixed with sorrow and grief within Maggie's voice. However, what could explain her guilt, he wondered? He had no answers now.

But today there had been a bit of change in the geopolitical board. Or at least it's what they could think was happening, since they were once more listening to the special envoy Delacre, transmitting this time from the Assembly of Nations:

"I guess this little informal truce had let the time for both Osean and Belkan representative to train their voice, because, believe me, they're in good shape today!" The special envoy commented, as two angry voices were bellowing at each other, to either the amazement or the exasperation of the representative of the uninvolved Nations of Annea, Usea and Verusa minus Yuktobania.

"Noch einmal, ich lache (once again, I'm laughing)! You have attacked us since weeks. Killed our mens. And you are only admitting now that you were going to revoke the non-aggression unilateral treaty?"

"Thus, we will have the right to use strategic means of destruction." The Osean representative tried to defend himself but was cut by Frau Reutner.

"Your cherished Yukte allies had already threaten us with nukes. And last time I check this very building in which we are standing right now also suffered from the EMP disaster." Reutner retorted, almost chuckling due to the irony of the situation. Some representatives such as the one of Erusea and Adama were smiling at this notice.

"You will regret such arrogance when you will see Hoffnung and Sudentor burning." The Osean threw a tantrum. "Your foolish hopes of victory will burn there." He used the translation of Hoffnung to threaten the industrial heart of Belka.

"Hoffnung ist nicht nur eine Stadt. Aber eine Idee. Versuch eine Idee zu zerstören, Osean Abschaum!" (Hope is not only a city. But an idea. Try destroying an idea, Osean filth.) Reutner forget all politeness that being a representative usually required and released her hatred on her enemies' representative.

"But on another note, the Belkan embassy staff has agreed to sell a bit of our spare fuel in case Oured suffered another EMP." She then steered the talks into reminding that Osea had been weakened and had shown weakness to the entire world that once considered this country to be a superpower. And some country, Erusea amongst them, had begun doubting this assertion.

"This is nonsense. Osea will never yield to obtain anything from your undemocratic state." Wilson tried to deter what was a nonsensical claim of their supposed weakness. But like many people from a superpower on the verge of annihilation, he had been blinded while they were on the verge of greatness. Yet greed rarely created greatness.

"Again, last time I check, Wilson, Oured central Health Center had bought us quite a big amount of fuel for their emergency power supply." Reutner snapped back, making a fool of the proud Osean, displaying through a small retro projector a copy of the fuel bill, looking authentic. After all, it was always a good way to humanize Belka in the eyes of the Osean civilian when the majority of their officers and politicians were demonizing them.

"This is enough. I'm leaving this seance." Wilson admit after striking his place with a fit of rage, almost startling the nearby representative of the Sotoan countries and Verusa. He could do nothing but acknowledge the aftermath of the EMP disaster that Belka was considering as its greatest victory.

"I guess this third round of talking has been won by Belka. This was Delacre for Ufree FM, signing off." The broadcast was now finished, causing a bit of smile to grow on the face of Pixy. For once, Osea's might was being challenged seriously. And no one could say now who would come on top of this battle of power, ideals and military tactics.

For years, Osea had tried to fight through numeric advantage, dismissing risky innovation that could have given them an edge in this war. And if Belka's number could not stand against Osea's, their technology had given them the edge. From now a small balance of Terror had prevented both countries of enacting big military campaign like at the beginning of this conflict. It only needed a small push of fate or a sacrifice to put both fighting forces out of balance. Both countries were putting their pieces in motion, but who would put the other in a checkmate was still unknown.

"Pixy, Crow 2 and Savage 1, Briefing, now!" Bellowed Perrault from the height of the staircase leading to the restroom, having no wills to go down there and inadvertently listen to this infuriating broadcast of Ufree FM. For him, having a radio belonging to an allied state retransmitting what he considered to be nothing but Belkan propaganda was almost treason. He thought this war they were waging now was based on the free will that Osea was willing to spread all around the globe in their crusade for democracy. Yet he was submitted to this Belkan propaganda as well, which was slowly lowering his morale like many people involved in this war, even when the Osean top brass were using the effect of the EMP disaster to foster hit. After all, propaganda was always working best when the people affected by it are thinking they are acting with their free will.

 **Briefing room, Valais Air Base, Ustio, 30/05/1995, 13:15, Weather: clear with high stratus.**

The mapping system was displaying the area B7R -The Round Table-. Yet unlike in operation Choker One, the IFF indicator of the spot of the radar was not only featuring Belkan IDs, but quite a bunch of Yukte and Osean ones as well. Still, the allied forces were slowly dwindling, having suffered great casualties before even engaging the Belkan Forces due to Excalibur's strikes. From the fifty aircraft that these two superpowers engaged again thirty Belkan ones, there was only fourteen against twenty-two, with the Belkan reinforcement arriving in smaller numbers. Still, with Excalibur thinning the allied backup before they could even fire a single missile, the number of planes on each side was almost a constant.

"Orders have come in for an emergency sortie. A major air engagement is taking place as we speak between Belka and the Allied Forces near the border, in the B7R airspace, which Belka is committed to defend at all costs. B7R, commonly known as the "Round Table," has long been a symbol of Belka's political, military and industrial might, especially in the war forty years ago. However, at one AM today, along with its lightning-quick commencement of Operation Battle-Axe, the Allied Forces officially announced the permanent abrogation of its non-aggression unilateral treaty at the Assembly of Nations, and simultaneously attacked B7R with a massive fighter squadron. This mission may be our chance to finally enter in the Belkan territory successfully."

"Why aren't the Belkan retreating and using Excalibur to wipe out our squadrons?" Pixy asked, now a bit doubtful about Belka's tactics.

"It seemed the raw magnetic elements below the round table are messing with the guidance of the reflectors Excalibur is using for its strikes. It's an advantage we have to use at all cost!" Perrault cheered, almost happy that their engineers had finally found a way to bypass the shield that Excalibur had created around Belka.

"So, if I understand well, if we win this fight, we may be able to storm into the North of Belka?" Crow 2 inquired, finally seeing a hope to change the pace of the war.

"Indeed. Excalibur by itself is something we cannot attack head-on. However, our tacticians have established that they cannot support their forces above urban areas or when engaged in close quarter dogfight." Perrault explained, as the mapping system zoomed out to display Belka and its neighboring countries, along with the range of Excalibur and a path from B7R to Hoffnung.

"So, next ops might be above Hoffnung?" Pixy wondered, not really rejoiced to use Belkan civilian as cover. He had no issue fighting his countrymen but could have some if Osea bombed indiscriminately civilian and military targets. Yet the EMP disaster struck indiscriminately too, and from Osea's point of view, it was understandable they wanted to get revenge and reduce the meager militaro-industrial Belkan complex to rubble as a retaliation. And the Osean military was not renowned for their accuracy. The industrial cities at the North of Belka would be leveled.

"Maybe not the next one. Large scale battles are the only way to efficiently dwindle the Belkan Forces. There might be more than one battle above B7R. But you can be sure that Hoffnung, and to a lesser extent, Sudentor, will feel the wrath of our revengeful soldiers!" Perrault ended this briefing on a pretty angry note. Osea and Yuktobania had begun to set their more destructive non-nuclear weapon.

"Dismiss. And obtained us victory." Were the final words of the Osean major.

A few minutes later, their fighters filled with anti-air armament, the three fighters were taking off, saluted by the more numerous non-flying personals. B7R would be the fight of his life, Crow 2 thought.

Pixy's mind was steered toward a simpler motive. He hadn't his mind focus on the overall geopolitical situation. But on a simple human thought: revenge.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 30/05/1995, 14:00, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

"Damn'it, I cannot shake him. They are outmatching us."

An Osean F-15C with a standard grey camo was pursued by a Belkan Su-27. A gun burst from the Belkan fighter hit his left engine, and the sudden loss of thrust made his fighter shiver as he made a U-turn to the left, hoping to lose the Belkan pursuer. It was in vain: extending his airbrakes, the Su-27 turned with a smaller turn radius than the Osean fighter. And two missiles ended his life.

This scene was repeating all across B7R when the three pilots arrived. The travel had been a quiet one, with the pilot wanting to avoid being targeted by Excalibur outside of B7R where the proximity of the fight was shielding them from the Helligen Kolumne. They had come with one fuel tank as they would need a bit of extra fuel due to the increased fuel consumption caused by the intensive use of afterburners when dogfighting. They dropped it before their arrival, as it would only increase their radar cross section.

They were arriving quite high, when most of the fight was getting down at lower altitude, where radar was hindered by the raw magnetic stuff beneath the round table. The best theory about the origin of this magnetic anomaly and the "Round Table" at the center of the area was the fall of some asteroid, or intensive volcanism. And both could explain the richness of the soil in rare earth. Still, the most easily accessible were situated on the now Ustian side, thus it had prevented Belka to use those resources to get out of their current recession.

Arriving from the South-East, Pixy quickly noticed a single F-14D being surrounded by two Fulcrums and one Flanker, nearly two thousand meters lower.

"Time to strike the iron while it's hot." Pixy pitched down and dived to the rescue of the Osean, while the two F-16Cs were tagged by two Fulcrums head-on.

He rushed head-on toward this helpless fighter, leaving his two slower comrades behind. The closest Flanker who was aiming his SAAM on the Super Tomcat was shot down by a gun burst, and the second who was lagging a bit further met his doom by a pair of missiles. The MiG-29 chose to be brave and kept attacking head-on. Pixy knew he wouldn't have the time to get a proper lock. So, he fired a QAAM on the twelves of the Belkan pilot, and extending his airbrake, steered his aircraft in the same direction than the Belkan Fulcrum. He caught with him quickly, having far greater thrust than him. And as the Belkan fighter was losing focus and speed evading the gun burst of Pixy, his QAAM he fired prior to the chase closed on the enemy fighter after having done a U-turn. Unable to shake him this time, the Fulcrum was downed. And while he was taking those three down, the two Fighting Falcon accompanying him had dealt with their opponents.

"Thanks, Galm 2" The Osean was glad this unexpected help come. He could stand his ground against most fighters, but the MiG-29s and Flankers all around here were outmatching his twenty-years old plane.

"So, these are the reinforcements." Another Osean pilot commented, flying in a F-15E. This very pilot attracted the attention of a Belkan Flanker. And if both aircraft were equipped with SAAMs, the latter evaded them easily while the first had trouble dealing with them. Luckily for the Osean a XMAA from Crow 2 took down the Su-27 before its tracking was successful.

"We can still do this. Let's show those mercenaries what the Osean Air Force is made off!" A younger Osean pilot exclaimed, after he managed to down a Su-27, but at the cost of three QAAM.

In the next minutes, Pixy bagged four other kills, one against a MiG-29 he attacked from his one hour, gunning the Fulcrum from below. The two others were a bit trickier, or just riskier. Maybe Iskanda had given him the taste of crazy schemes. Climbing below two Su-27 who were firing on a F/A-18C Hornet they had managed to separate from the rest of the Osean forces, he broke their line of fire, before extending his airbrake while doing a barrel-roll to evade the fire of the Belkan duo. He ended up behind them and sealed their fate with a pair of XMAAs. The fourth kill came ten seconds later, when a Belkan Fulcrum attacked the Hornet he just saved from its three o'clock. Pixy had not the time to turn quick enough but his QAAMs did. Again, the Belkan fighter evaded the first approach of the missile, but as such he was unable to get his gunsight on the F/A-18C and ended up being the prey instead of the pursuer. A few bullets on his left engine were not enough to destroy his craft, but the QAAM that Pixy launched a bit sooner did the job well.

In the meantime, the two F-16Cs that came with him did not lost their time either. Using their smaller size and turn radius than the bigger Fulcrum and Flanker, they were able to score a few kills on the Belkan Forces. Furthermore, a squadron of Yukte MiG-31 had managed to get through the Helligen Kolumne surrounding partially the Round Table, and their SAAMs were laying waste on the Belkan Forces. Furthermore, a few EA-18G Growler from the Osean navy had been brought here to try to nullify or at least reduce the magnetic interference caused by this place, fostering a bit the range and accuracy of their XMAAs. Of course, they would never be as precise and deadly as the Belkan ERAAMs. Still, such reinforcements were only balancing the battle, and not turning the tide of it, as from the ten Osean aircraft remaining when the sixth Unit arrived, only three F-14D, three F-15Cs and one F-15Es had survived

"Fifty percent of the Belkan forces are destroyed. Keep up the good work, people." The Osean captain leading the four Eagle unit consulted his pre-fly data. Finally, they were seeing a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

"Reinforcements aren't coming. What's our country doing " A worried Belkan asked, as the few oncoming reinforcements were coming sparingly, a few Su-27 and MiG-29 from time to time.

"If they were here, we could have already won the day." Another Belkan pilot replied from the cockpit of his Su-27. He tried using a SAAM backward after evading a XMAA from Galm 2, but the Belkan merc dived below his firing arc, before climbing right at him. A good Schräge Musik ended the Belkan craft.

A Belkan Fulcrum tried to engage him head-on, but his radar was faster than the Migalev's. As such, even if his lock-on alarm blared when he fired two missiles at the enemy fighter, the Belkan volley missed him.

Crow 2 and Savage 1 suffered a bit of gunfire as three Su-27 managed to slow them down by forcing them to do evasive maneuvers by firing their SAAMs. Yet the pilots of the slightly damaged Falcons weren't planning on getting shot down. Hitting the brakes when the Flankers accelerated to have a better accuracy with their gun, and tilting on the roll axis, they almost collided with the Su-27, as the Belkan overran them. A few more bullets grazed them during this highly risked maneuver, and some actually hit them, but they had a clean window of fire on the three Flankers as they were slowing to turn back to engage those their F-16Cs. A double volley of three XMAA was enough to destroy the small Belkan team.

In the meantime, Pixy had gunned down two more fighters. And he was downing a third one by a pair of missiles when he was informed of Belkan reinforcement.

"This is Soyuz twelve, I have two squadron of Rafales and Gripen Cs incoming. And a.." A shot of Excalibur illuminated the upper level of the atmosphere. Since the overwhelming majority of the Osean spy satellites had been destroyed, and as they would get vaporized before even getting in place, Yuktobania stepped in and brought an alternative solution: launching Soyuz ships in geosynchronous orbits. They thought it would be harder for Excalibur to sight them. They were wrong, as much as they were when they thought nuclear fire would work. A dozen of them had already been destroyed. Of course, it wasn't hard for Yuktobania to fill them: the criminals, the betrayers and all defective members of their army were used, sacrificed for intel that would not steer the balance in favor of the Osean alliance that much.

"Soyuz fifteen, I have them on my scope too. 4 Rafales, 5 Gripen, and 3 Su-3…" Another spaceship was quickly destroyed after sending his report. They could only send one notice, and then the orbiting Merlin satellites would spot them and relay them to Excalibur. The TFLS would either melt partially their ship and the vacuum would kill them due to the lack of pressure, or it would overheat their Soyuz until it burn from the inside, with the much more concentrated in oxygen air of spaceship burning faster than usual. Pixy felt almost sorry for those poor soul the allies were sacrificing.

"This is Shadow 1, we are asserting the Soyuz's data for the five Gripens and the three Terminators, but I don't see the Rafales. They must be using their ultra-low flight capacities." An EA-18G pilot was able to confirm the data but complained about the impossibility of having AWACS to help them at spotting target. While in the other way around, the Belkan fighters had the help of the radar and other sets of instruments the Merlin satellite network was transmitting them through phase modulation radio. Phase modulation radio alone was making this quite hard for the Osean Intel Agency analysts, as such tech hadn't been too developed in their country, due the Osean having discarded it, having judged it too expensive to be used on a wider scale.

And as such, as the Growler was implying, the four Rafale of the Graukatze (grey cat) team with a livery of spotted grey were closing on the Foxhounds, going right below them. Pixy had tried to look for them, but the three Su-37 with a three-tone dark brown camo that caught him into a mauling maneuver keep him too busy to find them. And the remaining Belkan fighters, including the five Gripen C of Grauwespe Shaft (Grey Wasp team) with a grey camo spotting light yellow line and red ones near their engine, making them look like small wasps, were keeping all the other allied airplanes busy as well.

"Fox 3" Graukatze leader announced with chill, as his squadron that had managed to bypass the allied frontline by using the ultralow flight capacities of their Rafales. They had a hard time skimming above the edges of the Round Table, with the heavy electromagnetic interference at this altitude making piloting even harder. But they were all satisfied when they climbed after the allied frontline and fired a numerous XMAA volley on the Yukte interceptors. None of them survived this brutal onslaught, and the Growlers would very likely be their next target.

Pixy was still stuck in the mauling circle, with the Su-37 firing their backward QAAM each time he got a lock, forcing him to back down or evade, this almost putting him in the crosshairs of the two other Terminators. So, he chose to climb, since he couldn't dive that much -they were circling just three hundred meters above the ground-. Two of his three enemies followed him, with the latter staying behind to be in range for his XLAA. Pixy knew the Terminators had a climb rate as good as his, and their vector thrust was greatly compensating the instability of vertical flight. He wouldn't be able to stall-climb them. But he was fine, since he wasn't planning to do this

Instead, he pulled out a much more hazardous maneuver. He actually saw his leader pulling it, so it was something doable. He shut down his engine, letting gravity win over thrust, his aircraft falling like a rock between the two Su-37 which quickly executed barrel-roll outward to avoid collision. At this moment the Belkan pilot thought he might have engine issues, when they saw him falling from high. Yet they would have never expected this enemy to fire a pair of QAAM, before pitching down, thus enacting a two hundred and seventy degree turn on the pitch axis.

And through this infinitesimally risky maneuver, both Terminators trailing him were shot down. The last one which had chosen to stay behind immediately fired a XLAA as Pixy leveled after this high negative g maneuver that caused him a bit of red-out. He had still some reddish broken lines in his eyesight when he barrel-rolled leftward to evade the long-range missile. He fired two missiles while doing so, as both airplanes had come closer -both were engaging each other head-on-. Unluckily for him, or luckily for the Belkan, only one missile caught his target. But in the end, this little luck that fate provided to that Belkan accounted for nothing : Pixy used his better mobility against the damaged Su-37, and after a ten-second-chase, in the midst of a scissors battle, Pixy got a fire opportunity and capitalize it. An accurate gun burst set both engines ablaze, sealing the fate of the Belkan pilot.

Meanwhile, having teamed up with two Yukte Su-33 and one Osean F-15E, the two Falcon pilot that came with him today engaged the 5 Gripen Cs. The first fire exchange head-on saw one Yukte being shot down and the F-15C suffering damage on his left engine, but three Gripen Cs bite the dust too. The two Gripens tried to outrun the now more numerous allied fighters but as their afterburners had suffered a bit of damage, they could not evade the SAAMs that the F-15E pilot carefully aimed after seeing the Belkan fighters losing speed evading some XMAAs from the Yukte and the two F16Cs, respectively.

Pixy hadn't the time to see where the Graukatze squadron headed after firing an XMAA volley on the Osean Growler, suppressing all electronic warfare planes. He could use one solution, but it was a risky one. Far riskier than just shutting down his engine during a climb. He turned off his radio and IFF transmitter. But this allowed to shunt the Belkan security software that was preventing him from using his phase modulation radio he had kept but almost never used since he rarely collaborate with the Belkan Air Force as a merc. Of course, this cause a bit of worry from Crow 2, who wasn't hearing Pixy's voice anymore:

"Galm 2, you have shut down your radio. Is there something wrong with your craft?"

"Do you think he's using the Belkan Seite of the Force to locate those Rafales?" The Osean Strike Eagle pilot asked, a bit surprised by the other Eagle pilot doings.

"Come on, work, little PM technology." Pixy wished, tapping a bit on his data screen. For a few second, the screen showed nothing but statics. Then it displayed a strange radar map: there was the Round Table and all fighters on it, but there was some red circle at the South-West of it, where Helligen Kolumne were slaughtering the Osean and Yukte reinforcements. Next time he would remind to use this Belkan tech he was carrying, but only in desperate situation.

After a good minute, Pixy located them flying very low in a diamond formation, well covered by the radar anomalies of the area. He had no idea how their location may be transmitted by PM radio then. It could be through those Merlin satellites. Now, as he was approaching them, unnoticed to them as is own IFF wasn't identified as an allied one anymore. Still, using this tech was a double-edged sword: now any aircraft could think he was an enemy one and fired at him. Furthermore, with his identifier off, he couldn't lock his XMAA nor his standard missiles. It would be four gun kills then.

The first was shot down from behind, gunned without even understanding what was going on. But the other three Rafale saw something was amiss when an unidentified F-15C with red wingtips began to follow them way too close, and when one of them exploded in mid-air. The two who were at the middle of the diamond formation hit the burners, temporarily outrunning the F-15C, while the one forward did an Himmelman. A pair of missiles - they had to be XMAAs to be fired from so far- were fired by this Rafale. Pixy had no other choice but to hit the deck to evade them. Then he climbed back at the enemy Belkan multirole. By pure reflex, maybe having forgotten he hadn't no more lock-on capacity, he fired a pair of missiles, aiming a point a bit further than the Rafale. And by sheer luck Graukatze 1 only managed to avoid one. As such, when Pixy finished his climb, it wasn't hard for him to terminate the damaged fighter with a gun burst below the cockpit. The pilot was surely killed or heavily wounded, because when Pixy destroy the aircraft with an unguided missile that he fired from the six of the Rafale, no evasive maneuvers were attempted.

"Wer fliegt diese ohne IFF Adler (who's flying that Eagle without IFF)?" Graukatze 2 inquired, wondering who could do such crazy schemes in the middle of a heated battlefield.

"Ich weiß nicht. Aber er muss gut, um Morden ohne Verschluss zu erreichen (I don't know. But he must be good, to obtain kills without locking-on)." Graukatze 3 replied, with no more intel on this fighter they were now engaging.

The two fighters were now engaging Pixy head-on. On a hunch, Pixy decided to fire a pair of missiles in front of him, causing his foes to roll outward of their trajectory. Even if he had to evade their missiles which were locked, which he did by a streak of sharp turns, his prior tactic allowed him to fly tilted between the two Rafale Ms. Sure, the tip of Graukatze 4's left wing went a bit between his rudders as they flew by, but it was fine. Iskanda would have surely find this kind of foolish maneuver to be beautiful or even enjoyable. He only found it efficient, as it confused the Belkan pilot.

Pixy had recognized during operation Juggernaut that the Rafale - at least in the hands of Espada 2- was a good aircraft. But in the hand of two confused pilots it wasn't enough to counter a quicker airplane. Extending his airbrake, he pulled a fast U-turn. He felt the g-forces in this turn but was in the six of the Graukatze 4. A gun burst on his engine was enough to wreck the fighter.

"Hilfe. Ich bin verfol… (Help I'm being pursued by…)." Graukatze 3 tried desperately to call for help with worries in his voice, but in such engagement, help would usually need a minute to come. Yet in dogfight like this a minute was an hour. And an hour an entire day. His radio was cut when a gun burst that was aimed for his engine destroyed his antenna, as he turned hard when the Belkan mercenary opened fire.

It was beginning to be the end for the Belkan defenders of B7R. The few Osean that had managed to go through Excalibur's strikes were providing the few extra fighters needed to slightly shift the balance in favor of the allied forces, yet temporarily. Still, the number of Belkan MiG-29As and Su-27s that were guarding the place had dwindled to a number below five.

Pixy made that number be below four in a matter of second. He caught the Rafale M using his greater acceleration, but as the Belkan pilot was trying to make him overrun his target, he pulled a high-g turn. This made Galm 2 arrived straight on the three hours of Graukatze 3. Pixy quickly fired two missiles and his gun on the already damaged aircraft. From Pixy's point of view his opponent could have tried to evade his fire. But he didn't, preferring to bail-out a few milliseconds before Pixy's missiles blew up his engines.

Pixy had managed to locate and destroy those four Rafales Ms by almost using a bit of reverse engineering. But when he wanted to regroup with the allied squadron and a Osean F-14D pilot that was unsure whether or not he had to fire on that F-15C without IFF, he understand the drawbacks of trying to use the PM radio in large-scale battle such as this one. Hopefully the Osean was seeking to engage him from close and thus saw the Ustian roundels, five second before Pixy finished switching the IFF back to on.

"Eh, Galm 2, stop pulling stunt like that. I could have almost caused blue on blue here." The F-14D pilot sent him his reprimands for this hazardous behavior, with a slightly grumpy voice.

"Yeah, you could have died with that kind of crazy schemes only your former leader would think off." Savage 1 added a line to these reprimands, while willingly or not reminding him of both his fallen squadron leader.

"That was worth the price." Pixy snapped back, a bit bothered by the remembrance of his failures at protecting his squad leader.

"The Round Table is almost toppled over. Thanked the reinforcements for that." The Osean GHQ announced, seeing almost no more Belkan defenders.

"Finally, some good news." The Osean pilot of the F-15E that had helped taking down the Grauwespe squad rejoiced himself at this little improvement of their survival chances.

Yet if they could have some AWACS around here, he would not be rejoiced that much. Sure, the AWACS could have delighted him even more by displaying the Osean reinforcements getting closer and closer of the battlefield. However, the AWACS operator would have surely made them notice the reinforcements getting thinner. Even one week after the EMP disaster Osea wasn't able to mobilize hundreds of fighters in one place and in one time. Besides, the Merlin satellites were still hindering the sending of Yukte reinforcements from across the Ceres Ocean to a somewhat worrying level. But in the end, what an AWACS would have shown them would have been the two waves of Belkan reinforcements. And this would have definitely not rejoiced the Osean fighter pilot. Nor the Ustian or Yuktes, to be honest.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 30/05/1995, 14:20, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

5 planes were closing fast on the Round Table. 4 planes that look like F-14Ds, but with their rudders tilted outward and vector thrust, and of course one ERAAM launcher, which forced them to use pair of XMAAs instead of their XLAAs, but it was well compensated. Trailing them was a F/A-18MW Mörder Wespe equipped with a heavy ECM system and ERAAMs. It was a fusion of the anti-aircraft system of the F-117Z and the good lifting capacity of this carrier-capable fighter. All had a livery comprised of an overall dark grey -the same color of the sky before the snow fall- with white noise, white wingtips, white elevators, and a small white band behind the cockpit. A small diagonal stripe coming on each side of their canopy was featuring a few snowflakes. Last but not least, their logo was a humanized pelican in a flying suit, inside a yellow and blue circle, with the same line of snowflakes in the background. An art analyst could have said this one was less Belkan-like than the one of Rot squadron, which emphasized the Belkan pride. Maybe it came from the humbler origin and ambition of their leader Erich Hillenbrand.

Their squad number, the 22nd Air Division 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron was not an unknown one to the allied forces. They had already been encountered during the very first battle in this same area. There they butchered the few Belkan aces that had chosen to stay within Ustio, depriving Ustio of his first and second Unit. Later they would help destroy the third and fourth Ustian Unit in which a twelve plane Crow squad was, with the help of Gelb squad and the F-117Z of Vampir team. Those fives pilots had all dozens of kills under their belt, and none was reluctant to go fight the allied forces over B7R today.

The order of the squadron leader was simple, as they had almost made it through half of the Northern part of the Round Table unnoticed, thanks to the allied lack of AWACS or other EW planes:

"All planes, release your missiles."

And thus, six ERAAMs were released, aiming for the Condenar squad of Sapin, made of 10 Typhoons with a dark grey camo and black wingtips. At this distance the ERAAMs arrived at more than Mach 2 on their target, ensuring six kills. The remaining one scattered, and even tried to fight back, launching entire volleys of XLAAs. Unluckily for the allied forces, and as Hillenbrandt was expecting, the combined radar anomalies of the round table and the ECM of the F/A-18MW were enough to nullify the attack. However, the long-range IR-guided ERAAMs weren't. And all typhoons were shot down before they could land a hit on the Schnee squad.

"Hallo crow 2. Du bist allein heute. Was passiert mit deinem Schaft? (Hello crow 2. You're alone today. What happened with your squad?)" Schnee 1 asked, as he had recognized the emblem of the squadron that they reduced to half its original size nearly two months ago.

"I'm not alone here. But you will die alone, Erich!" Crow 2 snapped back, as he, Pixy and the F-16C piloted by Savage 1 were heading head-on against the five airplanes. Their formation was simple with two slightly ahead and two on their side slightly behind, and a good five hundred meters behind was the Mörder Wespe.

The tactic the allied pilots enacted was not very elaborate, but at least allow them to survive this first engagement. They all fired their last XMAAs, which forced the enemy fighters to pull out evasive maneuvers. Flying faster than the Falcons, Pixy fired a missile on the two planes, but both missed. Yet, this left a gap in the enemy formation. Pixy did not stop to look back or try to get in the six of those F-14W Wildcats. Instead he went right for the Wespe of their formation. Of course, he wasn't able to track him through radar. And the missiles he sent head-on were evaded by a close barrel-roll to the left. But Pixy had seen this attempt at fooling his attack coming and had begun a quick dive. It wasn't a Stuka-like, more of a very restricted parabolic one. Still, the Wespe that had bled his speed a bit doing this barrel roll wasn't able to escape the precise gun burst when the Eagle climbed back. Even if he only suffered minor hits on his engines, it was too much for him, as his mobility was hindered by the heavy ECM he was carrying. He saw Pixy climbing vertically, enacting a loop toward his defenseless fighter.

The situation of the Wildcats wasn't as troubled as their ECM's. They had already bagged a few kills on the Su-33s that Yuktobania had brought into battle. Those Sea Flanker pilots thought they could outmatch F-14Ds. Which they really could, to be honest. But this F-14Ws were much more mobile and unstable than their predecessors, with their new rudders and vector thrust allowing them to dogfight while keeping their wing closed. Thus, their attacks were with much more fierceness, almost wilder. The title "Wildcat" was fitting them to say the least. However, this more dangerous way of flying hindered the other defensive squadron that were still left in B7R, with one Belkan Su-27 having to bail-out after a Yukte hit his aircraft, fleeing the wrath of this Schnee Squadron.

"Halten Sie sich aus dem Getümmel. Sie machen nur Sorgen zu Schnee!" (Stay out of the fray, you're only bothering the Schnee.) One of the last Belkan officer in charge of the defensive team ordered with a stern voice.

Yet this order only further endangered the Schnee team, coupled to the loss of their ECM unit, which was shot down after Pixy dived on him like a bird of prey. He didn't have to aim his missiles, as his gun was enough to shatter the canopy and the pilot in it in a thousand pieces. He bypassed the burning wreckage, and went straight into the fray, crossing the way of some Belkan unit who were stepping back. He shot one pilot head-on on his way to the main engagement place.

Now the four Schnee were surrounded like wild animals that people would seek to capture, but don't know when to act, with the fear of being bitten causing them to step back each time they were locked by one of the Schnee members. Three F-15Es had already fall to their XMAAs, and a pair of Su-33s to the standard missiles and gun of Schnee 1. Still, the arrival of Pixy on the battlefield made the balance of power shift temporarily. He made only a single pass in the circle of fighters around the Schnee squadron, which was losing fighters with each second passing to the Wildcats. But it was enough to land gun hits on two Schnee team members and even shot one down when he destroyed his rudders with a missile. And Schnee 3 fell to a SAAM from a surviving F-15E.

"We can do this. Let's show them what the glorious Yuktobanian Air Force can do." A Yukte pilot tried to foster the will of his comrades, despite the tremendous losses they had suffered.

"We can do this. No, we will do this." A now more enthusiastic Osean pilot added, having his confidence boosted by this little glimpse of victory that was beginning to appear on the horizon.

Now the battlefield had taken a strange turn. Pixy had been mauled by the three Schnee fighter, and they were surrounded by the Yukte Su-33s and Osean F-15Cs and Es. And some Belkan Flanker and Fulcrum were attacking from outside of the formation, downing from time to time an allied plane using their SAAMs. But this strange situation didn't last long. Pixy broke the mauling circle by attacking a turning F-14W from its three hours, cutting the wing-root fillet as the plane was tilted. He had made another Solo Wing. But a XMAA from a Yukte Sea Flanker put an end to the pilot existence, as he was desperately trying to exit the combat zone. The rule here was to survive, and this pilot had failed to follow it.

"Only two more." An Osean F-15C pilot described the situation, being delighted as he saw Pixy and the two F-16C taking another member of Schnee down, with the F-16Cs forcing the F-14W to lose energy through evasive maneuvers. And then the F-15C overran him, before pulling out a Split-S and cutting the tail of the Wildcat from below.

"Niemals vergisst die Letzte (never forget the last)" Schnee 1 harshly retorted as he saw his wingman's demise and went right for that Osean. The F-15C pilot did see him coming and try to make him overshoot, but it was a vain effort. The F-14W did overshoot him from below, but it was only to accelerate and made a Herbert Manöver (J-turn) making Schnee leader arriving right on his flank. The bullets tore through his canopy, condemning the Osean pilot to a long and painful death by bleeding.

"Aber du bist die Letzte hier. (but you're the last one here)." Pixy replied, before engaging him. He was almost understanding him. After all, they were both coming from the same social origin. They hadn't grown up hearing stories of honorable knights. But stories of people who work hard to achieve the best of themselves, and sometimes manage to best their opponents. Where they were differing was in their ambition. Laura had given Pixy all he could obtain by making him follow her ambition of free soldier that mercenaries were. Erich Hillenbrand on the other side had kept his rank of second lieutenant, even earning the title of "Eternal second lieutenant." He didn't fly for wealth and flame. Just for the art of flying and the duty toward his countrymen.

Pixy and Erich fly head-on multiple times, each of them trading a bit of hits by their respective gunfire. They were crossing each other path's way too fast to hope getting a missile lock. Around them, some Osean and Yukte were still circling, but without engaging Schnee 1. They were enjoying the show. But the show wasn't going to last. From the South-West where most of the allied reinforcement had come from, a pair of XLAAs came from, heading for Schnee 1, who was just turning back to engage Pixy once more. He managed to evade one, but not the other. The impact made him lose control of his plane for a few seconds, which allowed Pixy to attack his opponent properly this time.

"Ich werde niemals die Letzte. (I will never be the last.)." Erich claimed, seeing the transmission on the display from his PM radio. Those Osean reinforcement were not safe.

Pixy finished the Belkan fighter with a missile in his engine inlet, seeing the aircraft burn quickly afterwards. He hadn't the time to see if Erich had got the time to bail out. If at least he did, he wouldn't have entirely lost. Pixy had never been shot down, but maybe succeeding in surviving after having bailed out in such a dangerous place was a victory by itself.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 30/05/1995, 14:40, Weather: light cloud coverage.**

The Osean reinforcement reveled themselves to be the Spitfire squadron. They had a pale white camo with flame decals on it, and were flying F-15F agile Eagle, which possessed canards, but unlike the F-15S/MTDs of Belka did not possess vector thrust. Their emblem was the eponymous fighter, that the grandfather of the squad leader had piloted in the 1940's war. Maybe he had met the father of Kupchenko then, that was a possibility. Pixy had heard Gault 1's father had come into Belka as a Yukte mercenary. The rest were rumors.

These reinforcements were carrying XLAAs and SAAMs, in a similar fashion to the Yukte and Belkan MiG-31s. They made quick work of most of the remaining Belkan defensive fighters, overwhelmed by the entire volleys these eight airplanes weren't keen on firing. One by one, the last Belkan defenders of the area B7R were falling to their death, and nothing seemed to be able to shift the balance of power back into Belka's favor.

Well, it wasn't true. Five F-4X IIIs Geist with a greyish paintjob and black stripes did. Equipped with X-shaped rudders and vector thrust, they were the Belkan reinforcement that allowed Schnee 1 to have a smile on his face when he was shot down. And again, they came in with their standard complement implemented with ERAAMs. This one, it was the time of the Spitfire squadron to be shot one by one, without any chance to evade the high velocity missiles that the ERAAMs were. Of course, Pixy recognize instantly this squadron with their emblem, which was an armored eagle head with white feathers spotting red and black stripes behind the head and a hand holding a knight spear, even if this squadron was the last one he was expecting to see on the battle. The shield-like emblem was complemented by a silver banner indicating their tactical fighter squadron, the 126th, along with four white curved lines that were coming from the left top and descending toward the left, drawing something that was looking like the wing of a bat. The final part was the grey and red letters indicating "SILBER"

"Damned, did a Phantom just hit me? I guess look can be deceiving." Spitfire 5 complained, as his whole plane was swept away like if he flew near a tornado due to the high explosive mass of the ERAAM. A well-aimed SAAM finished him.

"Phantoms? It's the Silber Eagle squadron." Crow 2 commented, surprised to see this veteran going into the battlefield once again.

"Du kam." (you've come) Pixy said, astonished than Dietrich Kellerman had taken flight despite his age. He had been a worldly renown ace since the Rectan conflict. He knew he would keep his students safe no matter what. Yet he would engage him. After all, he was one of the last students of Kellerman still alive in this world. It was time to see if they could keep up with him.

So, Pixy did not go for a head-on attack in the middle of the enemy formation, but at its far left. He managed to hit a student of Kellerman with his gun, and then he pulled out a close turn to get in the six of the damage aircraft. To his astonishment, he saw the F-4X pull out a Cobra. But since he had seen Laura's MiG-31X/V doing that kind of physically impossible maneuver, he was harder to trick. He knew that post-stall maneuvers were always depleting aircraft of their speed. Capitalizing this, he climbed, letting the Geist following him a bit too close, close enough to have a bit more bullets in his plane. His plane would surely need a lot of repair when he would get back to VAB.

"Ich habe dir (I got you)" The young Belkan pilot thought he had hit the Eagle when he ceased his climb, but it was only to barrel-roll the next second, evading a collision with the Geist. And due to the few damages, which the Belkan craft had already suffered, his pilot couldn't level up fast enough to lose the pair of missile Pixy fired while saying joyfully, emphasizing the "Nein":

"Nein. Ich hatte dir (No I've got you)."

Despite their falsely apparent age, these F-4X III Geist were outmatching most of the fighter currently in B7R, with all the F-15Fs gone after their second volley. And once again, Osean Eagles and Yukte Sea Flanker were going down one by one. Still, five Osean planes managed to separate and down a Silber member, but they were all so heavily hit that they fell prey to the fire of the three remaining aircrafts of his squadron.

Pixy killed another of these new Belkan younglings. He was once part of the Kellerman class, and now he was killing its members. Of course, he couldn't savor the irony. If the war had been a few years sooner, he could have found himself in the same kind of situation than those Belkan pilots. This one, he used his greater speed to dive below him, and climbed back at him. Then, without having the time to lock, he fired his last two missiles at the belly of the Geist. The plane disappeared into a ball of fire, as the remaining ERAAMs had blown up with him, which had quite a high explosive mass.

The fourth youngling was taken out by the combined efforts of the two F-16Cs and some F-15E harassing him from afar, with some Osean Hornets having succeeded in separating Kellerman from his student. Still, the five F/A-18Cs were falling one by one, and without having landed a single hit on the Belkan Geist. He saw with powerlessness his last student going down, hit by gunfire as he tried to evade a SAAM. But none of those Oseans would live. Kellerman quickly locked the two F-15Es with his ERAAMs, and the fire-and-forget missile did the rest. Then he noticed that the F-16C of Savage 1 was closing on him. He fled a bit toward the flatten peak forming the proper round table, and skimmed above him, heading to the ravine where Galm 1 and Gault 1 had ended their dogfight in. But this time an allied victory was not something he was expecting.

As he flew above the ravine, Kellerman used his stronger airbrakes to get slightly lower, and then pulled out a half barrel-roll. Five seconds later, Savage 1 overflew him. Kellerman knew full well the ERAAM wasn't a close quarter missile like the QAAM. Still, firing it without guidance from below the Falcon and with a good aim would be enough. The explosive mass added to the explosive power of the still unburned fuel was enough to reduce the F-16C into a cloud of burning dust. Once again, it was one body that would never be recovered. Once again, an empty tomb would be its only remains on this earth, which was not ensured, since Savage 1 was from the mercenary squad of Osea.

Still Kellerman was about to head-on toward the other Osean planes when he noticed a F-15C Eagle with both of his wingtips painted in red. He evaded the fierce gun run of the Eagle, but in doing so, he recognized the pilot. He had never forgot the face of any of his students, it was something he was proud of.

"Wenn ich verlasse dir war ich nur den Lerner. Jetzt bin ich den Meister heute. (When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I'm the master)" Pixy began to talk to his old instructor in his mother tongue, yet on a somewhat posed tone.

"Ich anerkenne. Du hast den Kampfregeln gemeistert, Larry Foulke. (I acknowledge, you had mastered the rules of combat.)" Kellerman admitted that he had succeed in outmatching all his student. But he wasn't ready to agree he had lost his title of Knight of the Round Table. Not yet.

Both plane attack each other head-on, with little to no avail. For both of them, this first maneuver was just a way of saluting each other like knights would do in the old times. Pixy try to get in the six hours of the old instructor by a sharp turn, extending his airbrakes at dangerously high speed to reduce his turn radius, causing a "structural integrity alarm" to be displayed on his HUD. Yet again, the F-4X III had had the time to do a Herbert Manöver, definitely convincing Pixy that fighting aces relying on HIMAT (highly maneuverable aircraft technology) was going to be tougher than expected.

" Gut, Larry. Zeigt mir was du kannst (good, Larry, show me what you can do.)." His own enemy invited him to lead the fight, when he could have already shoot him down with the last of his ERAAMs.

"Du willst eine Show? Ich werde eine geben! (You want a show? I'll give you one!)" Pixy replied, diving slightly to evade the Geist attacking head-on once more. But it was only to climb back at him from below. However, unlike with any other Belkan pilot Pixy fought today, Kellerman did succeed in evading him. Silber 1 dived while his F-15C was climbing. Galm 2 managed to escape the tracking of a well-aimed SAAMs, but it had been really close.

As soon as he was higher than his opponent, he fell on him like a bird of prey, trying to take advantage of his newly acquired energy. Still, even with afterburners and the speed given through gravity, he wasn't gaining much ground on the abnormally fast F-4X. Besides, the few times he engaged him, the HIMAT Kellerman was relying on today was outmatching and outturning him in every aspect. If he was in a game, he would say Dietrich had hacked into the software. Yet there was no moderator available right now to make his Geist become a simple F-4E Phantom, a fighter he had easily slaughtered at the beginning of the war.

"If you're cheating, then I had, too." Pixy mused, and quickly understood he would not get away of this fight unharmed. Rather likely being a Solo Wing again.

He only got the opportunity after a few minutes in which he saw Kellerman killing four more Osean that tried to intervene to lower the pressure on Pixy's shoulders but were shot down easily. To Kellerman these were still far of having mastered the rules of combat. And for this reason, they had been unable to follow the ultimate rule: überleben (survive).

Fighting those Osean planes had slightly deprived his old Belkan instructor of his speed, allowing his Eagle to outrun the Geist. He began to steer outward their fighting zone, only to steer his plane backward, trying to get in the third of Silber 1. However, his strategy didn't work. Extending abnormally large airbrakes for a F-4 just in front of his engine outlets, the Belkan ace evaded the assault, and was even able to gun the F-15C which had attacked tilted, with his belly facing the Geist.

Half of his left wing was ripped off by the bullets, and a "master caution: structural integrity alarm" blared at full power. "You're a bit late, little alarm." Pixy mocked his onboard computer, before using his new instability to turn back at the Ghost, even if his Eagle was a pain in the ass to fly with half a wing gone. Everything was vibrating onboard his plane due to the almost constant stall he was submitted to.

"Noch fliegen ohne eine Wing. Das könnte ich nicht. (Still fly without a wing. That I wouldn't be able to.)." Kellerman congratulated his former student.

This new instability, yet with both of his engines intact, gave Pixy an unexpected mobility. And when Kellerman began chasing him again, he was able to keep up with him. Even if it meant having his ears filled with alarms blaring. He did manage to shut them down, but his HUD was still red due to the damage it had suffered. Many pilots would have tried to bail-out and hope for the best to come. Pixy knew Kellerman wasn't someone to shoot at bail-outing pilots, but he wasn't willing to try his luck today.

He couldn't allow this dogfight to last forever. Despite his age, the reflexes of Kellerman were almost unbeatable, making very hard for Pixy to surprise him. He almost managed to hit him with a bit of gun fire from time to time, slowly reducing the speed of the F-4X, even if it didn't decrease its mobility a single bit, due to vector thrust. But after a little whirring session that brought both of them to the verge of entering into death spins, Pixy finally got an edge over his old instructor. Seeing the Geist struggle to keep his stability -while he wasn't caring for that since he didn't have any left wing by now-, he managed to pull an impressive horizontal loop that make his gun arrive on the three hours of the Belkan ace. This quick maneuver had been quite unbearable due to the g-forces it forced him to sustain, but the hits he got on the Geist were worth it. The F-4X lose its two upward rudders, leaving the two slightly lower standard elevators of the F-4 family with bullets embedded into them. The fragile hydraulic structure of the vector thrust had been taken out too. Pixy wanted to finish him, but when he was finally in the six of the damaged aircraft, his gun run dry. This is what you get from prolonged battles. Not being able to finish your enemy. And ramming into aircraft wasn't something he would have done. Solo Wing Pixy was a good title. No Wing Pixy would definitively not fit him

And as such, all he can do was watch the heavily damage F-4X III Geist retreat. Only a handful of the allied fighters were still flying over B7R. No one from the original attack squadron make it so far. Furthermore, Pixy couldn't feel that this was a victory, as the few Osean reinforcement were now mopping the rest of the Belkan survivors.

"Ich will dir zu überleben, Larry. Viel Glück. (I want you to survive, good luck)" Dietrich Kellerman wished him, not from an enemy to another wishing for a next battle, but with the caring voice he always used with every of his students. Maybe Pixy was truly his last student alive after all.

"Was bedeutet das?" (what does that mean) Pixy try to understand the final tired words of an instructor that should have retired long ago. For an unknown reason, his radar showed him a no-fly zone where the Osean were finishing the Belkan. He mistreated this for the natural EMIs of the area, but when he truly understood what Kellerman wanted for him, he understood what he had sent him: the coordinates of the oncoming Excalibur's strikes.

"Argh…Who could have thought they would deprive us of this victory." An Osean pilot complained, after an already very damaged Belkan fighter hit him square in his engine and thus he ended up exploding due to a nearby growing Helligen Kolumne. The Belkan knew he would have never made to the base. But he knew the Osean would be annihilated too when the ionized air vaporized his fighter, so this allow him to feel a bit of a relief before his instantaneous death.

And as such, when the Osean pilots should be cheering due to their victory, they were once again reduced to scared pilots running for their lives, as the blueish and indigo-like colors of the Helligen Kolumne were beginning to emerge and grow. And of course, the raw magnetic deposit beneath B7R make it very hard for any of them to survive. Pixy did, helped by this little gift of his former instructor. Crow 2 did too, as he stick with Pixy as soon as the Excalibur strikes began. Pixy was only seeing the fight of today ending on a straw, with both him and his final opponent having survived the fight.

Looking at the Osean behind him burning due to the Femtolaser overloading the atmosphere, he sighed, tired of this useless battle to him. He had achieved to show his former master his mastery, but this is not what he wanted to achieve in B7R. He had desperately thought the Grabacr squadron would show up, and that he would be able to avenge Laura. But sadly, he would have to wait to end the miserable traitorous life of Ashley Bernitz. His final thoughts as he left the battlefield were toward his old instructor. He was wondering where he could be going to. He knew he had not much fuel after such heated dogfight. So was him more likely.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 30/05/1995, 16:00, Weather: scarce cloud coverage.**

The weather was maybe a bit lighter than usual, but the atmosphere was not light as well. After having landed with great care due to his lack of left wing and the mountain wind, Pixy went to the briefing room, where this major Perrault, his de-facto superior since Koenig was gone missing in action above Glatisant was doing the debriefing. Obviously, this Osean with their biased idea of greatness and supposed moral high ground gave him a debriefing that sounded anything but false.

"The Round Table has been shifted. High command is greatly satisfied with the loss of those two aces squadron for Belka. They have been responsible of the loss of nearly one hundred planes in the beginning hours of this war."

"Shifted, nicht. We only picked up the pieces left on the table before it was sanitized." Pixy retorted with sarcasm, not sharing the enthusiasm of the Osean major a single bit.

"I agree with Solo Wing for once. It's not a victory, but a straw. How many planes did we lose on this one?" Crow 2 inquired, not very satisfied with the outcome of the battle either.

"Do I need to number only the aircrafts we lose above this AO (area of operation), or all our losses we suffered today?" Perrault said, hoping to get the first as an answer. Then their losses would be below the hundreds.

"Alle (all). Even those Yukte penal unit members they sacrificed for nichts (nothing)." Pixy wanted to know what this skirmish had cost to the allied forces.

" If we had to count them, plus the diversion force we threw at Excalibur, plus the losses the Yukte cargo squadron suffered due to Merlin satellites, we are above the two thousand military personnel dead or missing in action. And speaking of Excalibur, the defensive squadron had only seven Su-47s today. Which mean the assassination attempt on Kupchenko must have succeeded." Perrault recalled their losses, still trying to end on a more successful intel.

"So it was that your b plan? Wasting an ace on an assassination? Ursula Reutner is right to be yelling at your representative, your tactics made me sick." Pixy went into a dark tantrum, bellowing at the Osean officer.

"You have to show respect to your superior, mercenary Larry Foulke." Perrault tried to snap back, but he lacked the passion to fill his speech, and thus it resulted in only more anger from Pixy.

"My superior is dead due to your powerlessness. You wasted the abilities of my flight lead. And I'm sure with her on the battlefield today we could have won before Excalibur fired at us and we would have obtained more than a straw!" Pixy retorted while starring with hate and disgust toward the Osean. Then he left the room, but couldn't slam the door properly, due to the door having a semi-automatic closing system.

Crow 2 followed him shortly, not wanting to suffer the anger of the Osean

Both would meet again drinking a bit with Hervin at the mess, having obtained from Frau Steller a bit of beer to forget their situation. Hervin had lost one of the only persons in the Ustian military who trusted him with Koenig. Sure, there was still minister Kerzen, but since the liberation of Directus he had been called to Oured to help with the coordination between the allied forces. Of course, he wasn't having a very good moment there either, with each allied high-ranking officer yelling at each other whenever the Belkan forces destroyed their troops and pilots.

Still, he had the time to verify something while talking to Hervin this afternoon during their operation Battle-Axe. And what he had asserted through this talk was going to render Iskanda's assassination attempt even more useless than it already seemed to her wingman.

" Aber, you know, mein Söldner Freund (my Friend merc), Kupchenko is only one face of the coin. He's the military tactician. But another man is the scientific head of the Pendragon Projekt." Hervin began to explain with a voice that three beer had posed a bit more.

" Who? And why did you not say that when interrogated by the allied?" Pixy asked, a bit confused nobody asked Hervin if Kupchenko was the only thinking head or not.

"Karl Hellenseite. And because no one knows him, so no one ever asked about him." Hervin replied with a half-smile after having explained this half-lie.

"I agree, I don't know this name. Doesn't ring any bell." Crow 2 commented, having never heard of any Belkan scientist with such name.

"I guess many more people knew him as Charles Brightside - his original Osean name, he just translated it in Belkan-. He was one of their greatest minds. They made a mistake by not believing him in 1990." Hervin introduced this person Pixy was now picturing as some mad scientist coming straight from a sci-fi movie.

" And they didn't believe him about what?" Crow 2 said with interest, showing his curiosity toward this man who left Osea to go in Belka, when many people think people could only left Belka for Osea and never the other way around.

"Because he had made an algorithm that predicted the Ulysses incident. I don't know why, or to which aim. Still, when he tried to report that, he was mocked, silenced and revoked. Some people he had known in the engineering college and that had become fighter pilots since then tried to back him up, but only ended up court-martialed and demoted." Hervin summarized what he knew, searching through his head while scratching the latter's back.

"Now I understand why three Gault members have an Osean-sounding voice." Crow 2 realized, his mind slightly illuminated by this discovery.

"Exactly. If in 1990 Kupchenko lose his wife and daughter, he gained one genius and three aces. Those gains are maybe bigger than the losses, from an utterly tactical point of view obviously." Hervin ended this little history lessons of this person who could have been Osea greatest mind but chose Belka when abandoned by his superiors.

 **North-East of Schayne Plains, Belka, 30/05/1995, 15:30, Weather: overcast with heavy risk of thunder.**

His F-4X III had taken much more punishment than its armor was intended to bear. He knew he would never made to any base of the Belkan Air Force, either Hoffnung's, Sudentor's and surely not the Aldernest of Dinsmark. Trying to go to Tauberg could have been another way to reach a Belkan base, but to be honest with himself, Dietrich Kellerman was tired. Him, who had fight on all theaters of war, from the Rectan conflict to the Wieldevakian coup d'état, was now tired of war. He once read a poem which quoted: "And now this heart who hated war, now he's willing to go to battle." But for him, it was the opposite. His heart and soul wanted nothing but peace.

The thing he was the most tired of was having to see so many of his students die. He never had family nor wife and had thus considered his students he formed in the hope of turning them into the next generation of Belkan aces to be his children, in a sympathetic paternally way. Of course, he was quite saddened to watch the demise of his last batch of student today and did not feel any satisfaction while avenging them. Those Osean never offered him satisfaction in battle. At least, seeing Larry Foulke, this old student of the 1986 Kellerman group took a bit of weight off his heart. At least, he had the feeling he had succeeded somewhere, even if this ace was now the enemy of Belka.

And this is why he was heading to an old base, which he knew to be abandoned from almost all Belkans but a few numbers. An old bunker from the first Osean-Belkan war, when the Schayne Plains had been turned into a muddy network of trenches. It had been heavily modernized since then, in the hope of being used as a base for black ops or sabotage if the Osean would invade the Schayne Plains once more. But with Excalibur interdicting the area to any allied craft, nothing could fly other this area, even a small RC chopper and not be reduced to vapors and light by the TFLS.

He quickly recognized the place. It was quite smart to conceal the door of the hangar behind a stream. The opening system was quite an ingenuous one too: concrete pillars would stick out of the cliffside to divide the flow of the stream, living room for one fighter, before the door itself would open, perfectly camouflaged in the limestone cliffside. He knew with his damaged aircraft he could have just bailed out and walk there, but he wasn't in his youth, and walking for kilometers before having the possibility to rest there was not what he had foreseen. Besides, this base had quite an advanced system to turn any fighter into a STOL aircraft, even damaged ones like his. This system had been inspired by the catapults and the stopping system on carrier, but far perfected. Yet he knew it was something that wasn't painless for the pilot. He sent the code from his PM radio and the mechanism was set in motion.

The heavy concrete pillars effectively stick out of the cliffside, powered by the nuclear generator that was supposed to last for three decades. Then the door opened. And the system was activated, configuring by itself for his F-4X. An assembly of dampers came from the sides, the ceiling and the ground ten meters, forming some kind of cross-like structure after the door itself of the bunker, and clamped onto the hull of his fighter, super-slowing it. He felt like he hit ein LKW (heavy truck), due to the formidable horizontal acceleration he had just been submitted to. But this system had been conceived knowing that the human body could withstand tremendous amount of lateral Gs. Indeed, if plus twenty and minus five were able to kill a man in the vertical axis, on the horizontal axis, a hundred G for a very short instant was bearable. It was like if he had a violent car crash, but nothing worse than all those Gs he had endured throughout the years.

And, as he was stepping out of his damaged fighter, and as the door closed behind him and the inertial dampeners retracted, with the water sound flowing back again, he found something was wrong. Or just off. The light had been on before he arrived. But the biggest surprise he had, it was when a woman with messy black hair, semi-tanned skin and a strange perfume pinned him against the wall of the bunker, threatening him with a nailgun, coming from behind one of the fabric piece that was covering the fighters in there..

 **Abandoned bunker, Schayne Plains, Belka, 30/05/1995, 15:40.**

It had taken a bit of time before this unknown aggressor released him. He had his throat a bit sore from the tight and unexpectedly strong grip of this woman. Now there were sit on small crates housing weaponry for the fighters, facing each other's uneasy glare.

"How did you find this place?" She inquired, thinking it to be abandoned and forgotten. Yet there weren't many spider webs to spot, so maybe it wasn't that forgotten.

"I could ask you the same thing. I actually knew about it. It was the remains of an old bunker. Kupchenko had it modernized two years ago. Yet it wasn't supposed to be a permanent base. More of a pilgrimage place to him." The fifty years old Belkan replied.

"I guess you weren't coming to bring flowers." She went a bit sarcastic.

"Your allies attacked B7R today. Killed most of the defenders. But it ended on a straw." Kellerman specified the reason that had made him come here, having noticed on her shoulder the Galm insignia. So, this was the current leader Pixy had in this war. It was not unusual to see woman leading squadron to him, but a bit surprising amongst mercenaries.

"I don't know if they still are my allies. Otherwise this wouldn't have been bloodstained due to some Osean Abschaum I had to cleanse." She showed her weapon, which blade was covered by dry blood that had slightly turned yellow, fading the bright green of the jade.

"What you did does not matter to me. I'm not planning on returning to fight this war." He commented without showing any emotions nor regret toward those Oseans. They were his homeland's enemies after all. And as such he held them responsible for the death of his students.

"I would like to go back to the sky and fight again, but the Osean military will consider me a criminal now, and I will not join Belka." She asserted, emphasizing her will of independence, even if now it had made her alone.

"There is another way. But tell me, my young friend, do you know why those two countries are hating each other so much?" He asked openly, hoping this merc to be willing to listen to the old history lessons of an old Belkan ace.

"I know this is linked to the rogue knights that Victoire kicked off of Belka, but that's all." She repeated what this preacher had explained her in this little touristic moment in Directus.

"Yes and No. Do you mind if I'm going for a little history lesson?" He asked once again.

"You can. It's not like I could do much right now."

"The origins of Osea have very old roots. For a few centuries, before the medieval era, there was the Rémulian empire. A rich place built around the shores of the Bennian Sea, by trade with the nearby communities of the area. But we have few remains of this empire, because it collapsed around the fifth century, after a chain of natural event provoked a mass migration from northern warrior tribes that forced the nearby communities around the empire to actually invade it. Yet civilization survived in some cities, or some monasteries. Soon, once those events were eased, the place began to become rich again, using its still advantageous position on fluvial trade, as quite a great number of rivers end up in the Bennian Sea, and the way around the Northern and Southern oceanic facade were deemed too dangerous for the people of that era. Many Lands were not run by nobles but by rich merchants' families, this explain the roots of the federalized nature of Osea. At that time this unperfect federation of Osean territories was slowly becoming a naval power to foster its trade with this continent, and later the Verusan, Annean and Usean continent. They rarely seek wars at that time, only to secure their offshore trading post and other trade routes. Otherwise they were quite a peaceful land. Of course, the black plague of the fifteenth century took out almost half of the population due to their well-developed trading network." He recalled an history lesson Rot 1 would have surely did better, but since he had been killed by the very merc he was currently speaking to, he had to do everything by himself.

"I don't see where all of this led to the proud Belka going crazy on his richer neighbor." Iskanda pointed out.

"I'm coming on it. To ensure the stability they had lost due to this tragedy, a king was elected to offer a bit of unity to their union of merchant states. For two centuries, they did succeed in keeping the nascent Osean nation united and making it become the first naval power it still is today. They had quite a kind relationship with the Belkan federation of free counties. But one of their princes made a deadly mistake: to fall in love with the daughter of a fallen Belkan knight, having likely been seduced by this lady. Of courses it granted them all the Belkan territories Ste Victoire and her followers had not conquered, and which had formed some buffer zone between the two growing countries. Yet, despite the territorial gain, this led to the doom of the Osean monarchs. From this day a very high number of death in the royal family began to occur, and within two years she was the regent of what she was intended to turn into an authoritarian empire and use it to avenge her forefathers by attacking the state Ste Victoire had created. This led to a very bloody Osean civil war, which saw unprecedented number of casualties for Osea until this century. Curiously, it was an alliance between the kingdom of Erusea, the Yukte Empire and the Osean republicans that brought down the killer Queen -as she was nicknamed- down. The Osean federation came out of this stronger than ever, and this led to Osea becoming the powerful state it is now. However, this led Erusea to suffer an economic recession and later a similar revolution, but now I'm a bit dithering." He ended up most of his history lesson there, knowing that this "Killer Queen" was the true reason why so much blood had been split between Osea and Belka.

"But Belka didn't do anything, if I understand?" She said, trying to make all of this cope.

"No, they just watch things unfold from a distance. We might have been too proud to act. If our ancestors had acted back then, maybe those two states could have been friends, even allied instead of enemies. And so many wars wouldn't have happened." He almost blamed the current conflict on this lack of action.

"Pixy had some quote about that: apathy is death." Iskanda quoted his former student -knowing from Pixy's backstory the two of them knew each other-.

"That was great fighting him. At least I can now consider one of my students has finally succeeded in understanding the rule of combat: überleben. And I think you do to, since you survived this unsuccessful assault on Excalibur." He shared the little satisfaction he got from today's dogfight. But now it was him who had two questions for her. However, the few assumptions he could lay as likely answers would need quite a long explanation, in the end.

"Allow me to ask two things? Why did you threaten me with a nailgun before?" He wondered why a merc would use such weapon when he was seeing a Luger in her holster. "Because I run out of ammo, I did not find any here, you cannot put 30-millimeter shell meant for planes in it. So, I chose that tool as a weapon. It's as deadly in close quarter, and a lot quieter." She compared the nailgun to a one with bullets. And in the end, she was right, a nailgun could surely kill people if in good hands.

"And second, what's the thing with your perfume? I mean, musk is usually masculine choice, but you're free to choose whatever you like." He didn't inquire, just wanted some precision, and thus he would be able to eliminate some of his assumptions.

"I did some oversleeping in the wood with a fur cover." She responded a bit bluntly, without giving him a clear explanation at all, or it was something that was very far from a clear explanation.

"I don't get it." He rolled his eyes at her, showing utter incomprehension.

"I slept in the middle of a wolfpack. I guess you can explain me why Belkan wolves spare me when they are eating Osean infiltrators for breakfast?" She steered the role of our two interlocutors with him having to furnish quite a long explanation once again.

"Explaining this will need a bit of dithering, once more. You see, the Pendragon Projekt had not only technical and aeronautical goals, there are some medical branch. One named Hülse (scabbard), aiming to create exoskeleton suit to protect the infantry of Belka, referring to the scabbard of Excalibur that prevent its owner from being wounded. But one is almost as important as the latter: it deals with poisoning and counter-poisoning." Kellerman began his answer. And the last words he said made her suddenly doubt about the usefulness of her assassination attempt with cyanide.

"What do you mean?"

"Kupchenko knew in war time the allied forces might sent assassins to kill or poison him or his men. He realized he would need to be able to be protected from most poison the Osean killer would use and create new ones to arm his own hands. And all of this was successfully set in motion when a young Belkan scientist tried to run after she discovered something horrible. Her research was aiming to create a new combat gas that would go through skin and light to medium density fabric. She did succeed in her task, but what she created was so horrible that she decided to burn all her research and seek asylum at Tauberg. Kupchenko's Projekt is almost a state within the state, an independent army within the bigger Belkan Army." Kellerman explained with a chilled voice, having heard from this girl what the effect of this gas would be if used on the battlefield.

"What kind of gas could frighten a Belkan? An anti-pride one?" She asked with a shit-ton of sarcasm filling her voice, a bit doubtful.

"This lady was named Ärzte Gift, gift in the Belkan sense, for Toxin, not for Geschenk (present), had created the Scharlach Tot. It was a derivative from the venom of a snake that usually cause hemorrhages. Do you need me to draw a picture? Nicht? Gut." He answered with a bit of restraint in his voice. Used just a bit in a crowded area, and you would only find bones and minced meat. Soldier would need to wear full body armor meant for chemical fight with oxygen recycler, or just burned the effect of the oxidation of the gas. Indeed, to add to its destructive properties, it would create a very flammable powder on quite a wide area, and above all on all that wasn't organic.

"Jeez, I will never understand why the Belkan invented the word Arzt to designate a doctor. First time I heard it, it was horrible just to repeat." Iskanda chose to do a little phonic commentary before expressing her full point of view on such acts.

"It's not as hard to pronounce as Eichhörnchen (squirrel)." Kellerman counter-argued, having himself issues with this word.

"I agree with you on that last one. But back to what you were implying, it almost makes mustard gas seemed to be a fine death. So Kupchenko protect her because he understood something like that was way too dangerous, which I can fairly understand too. But what has all of this something to do with the behavior of those wolves?" She steered back their talk into its initial subject.

"Well, when she fled, she fled with her boyfriend who was a skilled ethologist. He somehow convinced Kupchenko to give them a budget about the study of wildlife behavior, while working for the Gift program. I'm sure at the time he was as doubtful as you are now."

Which, given the level of doubtfulness Iskanda was showing with her eyes wide open of astonishment, was quite a high likelihood.

"So, he began doing his ethology stuff, while she searched for some "synthetic protein inhibitor", or some biochemical thing with a similar name. They picked up some wolves and began making them associate things. At the beginning it was just some colors or stuff like that. But in the end, what they succeeded to create was not that much less frightening than the Scharlach Tote. They couldn't tame the wolves, but they managed to make them associate, and to spread this induced difference between Belkan and allied soldiers amongst the wolfpacks venturing in the forest of South Belka." He tried to sum up a process he couldn't even get a glimpse at. Explaining the reflection of a Femtolaser, that he could have. But ethology induced by biochemistry was a bit too much for him.

"And thus, they learned "Belkan won't hurt me" and "I need to eat those Allied Abschaum.", if what you're explaining had some sense." She finished his explanation. Yet she did not understand why they let her lift then.

"About you, that's fairly understandable. You're wearing like all Ustian military or mercs, old Belkan stuff. Thus, the Ustian are almost immune to this trap. But Osean, Yukte, or even Sapins that come within the eyesight of a "conditioned" wolfpack will be hunted like a deer and what will be left of them will be nothing more than some broken bones, torn off clothes and their military plates." He finally got her a reason to have survived over those worthless Oseans.

She was satisfied, with his answers, and thus their talks come to an end. Then she went to the Su-47 she was tinkering with before the arrival of Kellerman. Of course, he recognized the plane, especially its owner. After all, it was his owner who left it here with the two person he cared for the most. Those three things represent an era of peace for this man that had ended in 1990. He was almost surprised she hadn't realized she was working on the former plane of her nemesis.

"I wonder if Kupchenko would agree to let you modify his former plane." He specified the owner of the plane, as she was running some checks on the onboard electronics, verifying the worthiness of this plane, and especially it's old vectored nozzles.

"It was Kupchenko's?"

"Don't be surprised, mein Junge Freund. He let the corpse of his wife and an empty tomb for his daughter he never managed to find despite all the efforts he did into infiltrating the Osean military he deemed responsible of their fate. He abandoned this fighter here too because it had been the symbol of his previous life, in which he had known nothing but victories." Kellerman started to describe what this place symbolized to her nemesis: grief, death and defeat.

"Then I guess you can explain the strange thing with arrows and infinities?" She looked at him from the cockpit, having still not understood what it could mean.

" Those arrow and infinities had a strong symbol for his year. The year he obtained his rank as a worthy pilot of the Belkan Air Force, all that didn't suffered any defeat in a DACT get this infinity symbol. But suffered one loss and you would lose it right away. Yet Kupchenko defeat anyone he fought, even me and old the older ace. He chose this symbol when he got the Wilhelm medal for being the first knight of the round table. It meant infinity power to the infinity, and this an infinite amount of time." Kellerman recalled her the origin of this mathematical symbol.

" I get it. Since he had an exchange ratio of nearly infinity to zero back then." She agreed with this strange interpretation of asymptotic limits.

 **Mausoleum, Schayne Plains, Belka, 30/05/1995, 21:00, Weather: overcast.**

He had specified the name Kupchenko chose for this bunker. It was fitting, after all. And now, after a small meal comprised of the few dried means of subsistence, and his survival ration, they were watching the stars. The door of the bunker was open, and with the noise of the stream nearby, it was setting quite a chilling place.

The remains of Excalibur shots were still up there, adding some indigo dots around the sea of white dots that the Milky Way was. She was the first to speak, having been surprised when he gave her some advice to modify the Berkut to fit her fighting style he had watched from the data Kupchenko shared after their encounter above B7R.

"Why are you helping me, Kellerman? I'm your enemy." She asked, a bit curious toward Pixy's old instructor.

"Because I want this war to end in another way than just Belka forcing the hand of Osea or the other way around. And I know you're someone who think outside the box. You can give a better end to this war if you choose wisely." He tried to justify the help he was providing to Iskanda, while looking at Orionis' star.

Of course, this answer reminded her of Ste Victoire's advice on the future self she could and now wanted to become. But she didn't know who she would engage if she would take that thing to the air. She had some Idea on how to get revenge against those two Erben that humiliated her and nearly danced over her dead body, but not for a long term. She didn't know how this war could end in this better way Kellerman was speaking about.

They spent quite an hour stargazing, listing the constellation they knew, or to spot the orbiting satellites, either the ones belonging to the Merlin network or the few allied or civilian ones still standing. Iskanda was quite goose bumped to learn that some of those allied satellites were those Soyuz spaceships the Yukte were filling with criminals. She couldn't help but feel sorry for those poor soldiers sacrificed for nothing, whatever they had done to end up there.

Then, around 22:16, a streak of flashes colored the upper layers of the atmosphere. Almost a dozen of bright orange explosion happened, literally out of nowhere. In the same time the indigo remains lingering in the night sky turned to a bright turquoise blue once again, overlighting any visible stars. Excalibur was very likely firing at some nukes at high altitude, with the Helligen Kolumne forming right above it, like a gigantic blue neon in the middle of this dark night without moon. Yet nothing exploded on the ground or on the horizon.

The Helligen Kolumne was beginning to dissipate after as well as the streak of bright orange explosions. But surprisingly Excalibur fired thirty second after. This time, the Helligen Kolumne did not turn into some blueish color, but a pure white. It was firing way further than the upper level to cause the air surrounding the path of the laser fired from the TFLS to emit this kind of bright white light. Way further than it needed to fire if it was intercepting any kind of ballistic ordnance. Further than the reflectors or the Merlin Satellite Network. But they didn't enjoy this sound and light spectacle that much because the light was so bright than they had to turn away from it no to be blinded by its sheer brightness.

"Apparently Osea has learned nothing from the EMP disaster. Did they want to lose any more carrier?" Iskanda complained about the lack of change in tactic from Osean top brasses.

"They might have thought Excalibur could be neutralized by EMP. The truth is: it can't. Kupchenko make sure even a solar eruption could not deactivate Excalibur emergency power supply -since they run on the same kind of nuclear Stirling engine that this bunker is powered by-." Kellerman agreed on the fact that such nuclear bombardment was useless. And if they actually hit it with nukes, he was even doubtful than a single nuke would be enough. Enough to get rid of Excalibur defenses. But not of the main laser port.

"I'm wondering what the aftermath of this failed attempt will be. And what they used to attack now." Iskanda shared what was running through her mind, only certainties of a new disaster for the allied forces.

"They might have used some space weapon platform. Yet using and storing nukes in space constitutes a breach of international laws about space. Even Belka would not risk doing that not to lose the few allies they have left." Kellerman answered, without having a precise knowledge of Osean project in space. Of course, they had nothing that could rival the astounding technological marvels the Pendragon Projekt had created, but they could still consider those space platforms as a threat. A threat that had very likely been neutralized by now, if they thought of the power Excalibur used to strike there.

Both went to sleep after, with Kellerman living her the only true bed this bunker had and using a small foldable bed his survival pack included. It was the advantage of having a big fighter. Iskanda dreamt of future fights, with her finding victory once more. Kellerman had only one thing he could think off while falling asleep: the faint light print the Osean space weapon platform would leave in the sky like some asteroid being consummated into a falling star. And one of his dream depicted the city of Oured that he visited once or twice in his career falling prey to a rain of meteoritic fireballs.

 **End of chapter.**

 **I guess this one was a bit more concentrated on Pixy on a dogfight point of view, but I really liked him as a wingman, he was way more capable than the ones of wardogs squad and PJ later on.**

 **PJ: is this why I die insignificantly in your fic, without having the time to even try something with my girlfriend?**

 **Vergeltern: I guess, you should have flown better on my PS2… *evil smile***

 **I made a reference to some galaxy far away, and some other about propaganda.**

 **So, some encounters with ace piloting HIMAT because it's funnier, quite a lot of casualties for both sides. I considered a few chapters ago I was at the breaking point with the canon. Yet there will be a couple chapters that will depict elements of the canon I want to keep in this alternate reality scenario. You may guess what this space platform is, and maybe its fate...**

 **Of course, we have had a bit of politics, and there would be a bit in the next chapter. I intended to make this chapter last more, but it's already more than 16000 words long, something I'm satisfied with, and I want to keep this continuity of mission / non mission chapter, if you see what I mean.**

 **So, Bis nächst mal, Lesern.** **Feel free to review, comment, favorize...**

 **23/01/2020: some grammatical and syntactical mistakes fixed**


	18. Anfang des Sturzs

(Title translation: The Fall's Beginning)

 **Shores of Oured Bay, Osea, 02/06/1995, 21:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

A small group of persons was watching the area, focused on anything specific that could happen right now. They weren't scouts, nor overseers or snipers. Of course, they weren't soldiers, even if in this era of data that the World Wide Web had allowed to create their actions could do more damage than hundreds of soldiers, if well organized and foreseen. Their equipment was comprised of cams, mikes, pen and paper, but it could spread as much chaos if not more than another EMP disaster.

However, as nothing specific was happening right now, the group of journalist began to talk between each other's, sharing data, last news and reports, last juicy news and tabloids, and of course some last news of their family for the ones that had managed to establish some friendships.

One of them who opened the talk was the special envoy Delacre, which was describing the inside of the Belkan embassy to his colleague of OBC and the Osean Times.

"So yeah, there's this big metallic fence a bit medieval all around it, and some old divided windows, who much surely be a pain to clean, but the inside is pretty modern. They did keep the old and fancy candelabras, but they put some LEDs where the candles were. A typical good alliance of modern and old to me."

"You lucky bastard. They will never let us in." His OBC colleague complained, since for obvious reasons no Osean was allowed in.

"And they have very good power supply. At least theirs are EMP-proof it seems. I mean, even our offices in Oured suffered from it, I lost all my podcast that day." The journalist from The Osean Times admitted with some reluctance that Belkan technology might have an edge there.

"And how's Eugene junior?" Delacre asked with a slightly lower voice, since he knew the son of his colleague was in Aurelia by a far-away relative.

"Well, he has a hard time coping with the reversed seasons." Eugene senior answered, admitting that it was still easier to cope with a cold Fall in June rather than an EMP. He had once thought the war would come to an end by June or July due to the initial streak of allied victories. However, the current state of the allied front that had stalled on the Belkan border had reduced his wishes of a short end, like many people living in the allied states.

"I once went there in July. I had only brought tee-shirt and that kind of things, since I was going south. I thought I would come back with a well-tanned skin. I only came back with the influenza." The OBC reporter shared this little anecdote. To think that they had statues of Santa Claus on a surfboard was a good way to see they chose to make fun of those reversed seasons rather than complaining about them.

" On a side note, my second degree cousine find him a new surname: Genette." The Osean Times journalist added, knowing this habit of using junior and senior was a bit disappearing with time.

" Jeunette? It seemed a bit feminine to me, but that will definitely set the both of you apart." Delacre repeated with his Ustian accent, changing a bit the writing of this new name.

"No, Delacre. Genette. The final e is a deaf one. Your accent will always be quite funny, my dear colleague." Eugene senior corrected him, before having a small laugh.

A few meters away, three other journalists were speaking. There was the envoy of The World Times from the FCU, Réactions of Farbanti and La Polémica of Sapin.

" I wonder how the Ustian minister Kerzen is dealing with all of this. I mean, what is he representing right now but two fighters and their defensive troops in Directus?" The FCU journalist tried to understand what the great role of those mercenary squad was, which they had heard so much on, even on his far away city of Chopinburg on the Usean continent.

"Well, they took Directus back. And shot down quite a lot of Belkan aces. But I agree they cannot do that much with only two planes." The journalist of La Polémica, a dark-haired woman in her forties said while shrugging a bit. She knew they had secured some critical operation in April and May, but now there wasn't any good news from any battlefields. Of course, any good news for the allied forces.

"By the way, have you heard of those citizens of North Point that have reported the fall of some space debris?" The Erusean-sounding voice of the envoy of Réactions inquired, having heard only pieces from this event.

"Well, some people in the Comona Islands and Prefanesia saw them too. People thought of shooting stars at first, or even UFOs for some crazy dudes. But from the astronomy community there, they are certain these are not UFOs but rather some dust resulting of a strike from Excalibur." His colleague from the FCU completed, having drawn his cell phone from his pocket to see the news of his colleague on the homeland.

In all honesty, the likelihood that they could be a true UFO from another galaxy or solar system was infinitesimally low. Besides, if they had truly obtained the key to faster-than-light travel to come here, maybe they would be smart enough to avoid a planet on the verge of destruction, with one of its nation possessing a superlaser that could surely shot down some mothership if those aliens respected the laws of physics, unlike in any of these sci fi franchises.

Of course, the message that were saying there were space debris arrived on his phone quicker than the falling debris. As such, for a good half hour, nothing happened. Nothing at all, the sky was clear of any otherworldly colors, only featuring the print of the fighter jets doing CAP and other transport crafts.

However, after twenty minute of friendly chit chat, the journalist finally had something to focus on. A great number of lights were illuminating the clear sky, shadowing the far away stars. It was like new constellations had appeared out of the blue. But these lights weren't static: they were in motion, growing in intensity, number and size by the minute. For some of them, it was reminding some sci fi movies about the fall of NEO and such. A strange electronic buzzing sound, which was slowly gaining in intensity, was beginning to be heard all other the place. It looked like this sound was coming from a dark abyss or the infinity.

They had quite a nice view on what was looking like a stellar aeroliths rain. But they would not be the one with the better view on the event. Little did they know, they would surely be happy not to be in the better view of this event when it would be enacted.

 **Bridge of the Kestrel-class Discovery aircraft carrier, Oured Bay, Osea, 02/06/1995, 21:30, Weather: overcast.**

The captain Josh Vickers had considered himself to be lucky. His carrier and her escort fleet had emerged almost unscathed from the EMP disaster. Furthermore, the fixing of their electronics and the avionics of the airplanes they were carrying was almost over. And those new F/A-18F Super Hornet armed with XMAAs, LASMs and XAGMs would surely be a great asset over the future battles in the Belkan sky, when the round table would have finally been toppled over.

Yet, he had a bit of worry about the future of the war. Half of the pieces of those Super Hornets had been salvaged from the remains of the burned factory, half had been produced under license in countries of South Osea, with Leasath being a good piece's supplier. This had come for a cost of technological transfer of course, meaning that the manufacturer they contracted in this country had almost obtained the blueprints of those fighters for free. Furthermore, the man leading this weapon industries, known as Melchior Navarro, wasn't someone he would have trusted on this one. He was a greedy man that rivaled in this field their best traders, capable of turning his coat for any amount of money. To Vickers' mind, it would have been better to try using other factories amongst the allied states to diminish the risk of suffering supply shortage. However, for an unknown reason, the Osean high command had refused to contract anything from Axe and Hammer, which had suffered no damage of the EMP disaster or other national weapon manufacturer in the allied states.

Another worry was the low-quality planes they would buy to poorer nation or recycle from their wreckage graveyard near Solo island on the North-Western Osean Coast, a pretty desolate place, as it had been used as test ground for nukes decades ago. By themselves they were not that expensive, and the few electronics they needed to add to turn them into distractor UCAVs to keep Excalibur busy during operation such as operation Battle-Axe were not either. However, if the war continued to last, the cost would soon grow exponentially. And there was no good way to decrease the cost of using them. If they just launched them with long range radio guidance, they would more than often not be agile enough to evade Helligen Kolumne or the plasma shutter created by Merlin satellites, and any Belkan in a fighter or even a basic shoulder-mounted SAM would be able to take them down. And using EW planes to guide them would only result in pointless human losses.

And this was only one of the few shortages Osea had managed to solve partially. The EMP disaster had not only killed and destroyed civilians and military assets, but it had also slowed down the manufacturing process of many others, causing a domino effect, which resulted in the stalling of the majority of the great scale deployments. Thus, Belka could keep pace with Osea, despite Osea being an hyperpower and Belka only a local power.

He was about to take a walk out of the isle to appreciate the peaceful sky when the supposedly peaceful sky was shattered by a myriad of glowing lights. Glowing lights which were growing in size and intensity by the second. Soon the emergency alarms blared from the speakers, causing the high-ranking officer to run for a radar monitor. Each of those lights was produced by the fall of metallic parts into the bay. They had little time to move. And they couldn't move that much, since many of their ships were still suffering engine or rudder issues or fuel shortage from the EMP disaster.

For him, and for many sailors, marines, and the officers leading them, it seemed like time had stopped. People were doing nothing, or nothing which would matter. Some were startled, with no idea of what to do. Others were just stricken down by the sheer fear of being attacked in their homeland, while they were vulnerable. Osea's unrivaled naval power would suffer soon. Vickers issued an order, but would it be useful against near hypersonic projectiles?

"Initiate AA fire!" He shouted to his motionless officers, hoping that if they shattered the oncoming objects, it would decrease the damage.

And as such, shells, shrapnels, vertically launched missiles from the Aegis vessels, and more oblique fire from the cruisers and destroyer blanketed the sky above the Oured Bay. Some falling fragments splintered slightly, but the explosive power of the Osean AA artillery was not enough, and since they weren't intercepting conventional ammo, those fragments weren't blown up by the AA fire either. As such, most of this heavy deployment of fire revealed to be anything but an utterly failed attempt at delaying the inexorable.

And five minutes after seeing the first of those light, hell break loose. It seemed no Helligen Kolumne was required to unleash hell on the Osean fleet. The half-consumed debris had now reached a speed well above hypersonic velocity.

From the sky, an AWACS could do nothing but watch the scene with despair. The E-6B Mercuries that were covering the sky, as they could operate during nuclear fallout, this making them a bit resilient against the Merlin Satellites. Yet their hardened fuselage and structure made them easier to track, and they would be easy prey for the Belkan ERAAMs and Excalibur indirect or direct fire. However, in this very moment, it was not Excalibur's doing that were threatening their forces, but the remains of their own Wunderwaffe that in the end would have achieved nothing for them. If someone could detach himself from the gruesome scene that was going to happen, he would surely find an almost artistic sense in the light print the burning parts of this satellite were drawing in the sky.

Of course, for all marines and sailors, time was not for artistic considerations. The time that appeared to be stopped for the sailors was nothing but a moment of pure horror and utter chaos. On some ships, sailors just jumped into the water, forgetting all safety. But the vast majority were just so stricken by fear and astonishment that they couldn't do anything but watch the sky helplessly, as the falling part were visible by now.

Due to their hypersonic speed, the Osean onboard the boats had only a split second to look up to the sky one last time. Then the parts hit their ships or impacted them to be more precise. Manny were ripped apart or even cut in half by the sheer kinetic energy of those hypersonic projectiles. Indeed, those satellite parts weren't that big, but the kinetic energy of hypersonic objects made them as powerful as heavy-duty missiles. The biggest parts would first blow up the external hull of the ships due to the overheated all around then, then explode due to sheer kinetic power, being more powerful than thermobaric bombs. The few that survived direct hits were so shaken by the shockwaves they would often capsize and then sink. They had thought water would absorb the impact, but at such speed, water was harder than concrete for those falling parts. Furthermore, as sound was travelling faster in water than in the air, the shockwave spread quite quickly, even sinking some ships that were at one or two kilometers from the center of the impacts.

And the carrier met the worst fate. The main part of the Osean superweapon, the railgun that was propelling the ordnance of this weapon, went right through it, surrounded by a massive column of overheated air and smaller metallic particles. It seemed a luminescent arrow was piercing the bridge of the ship instantaneously, tearing through the hull like it was nothing. The ship was broken in half, but not fully destroyed yet. Of course, it was damaged way beyond salvation. But salvation never came, as the nuclear reactor powering this Kestrel-class carrier blow up due to the impact and the EMIs induced by the fall of those projectiles messing with its neutron capacitors that were limiting the nuclear disintegration to a needed level, thus resulting in a nuclear chain-reaction, or to make things short, the reactor turning itself into an atomic bomb. The Captain Vickers only had a microsecond to scream before his body and the ones of his horrified sub-officers were disintegrated, with all of them being paralyzed as they watched this horrific event unfold. The nuclear detonation damaged even further any damaged ship in the area and terminated any survivors that thought someone would rescue them later on.

From the perspective of the Mercuries operators, it was like long rays of colored light were hitting the ships and the water all around them, reducing an entire Osean fleet to smithereens, before a nuke explode in the middle of all of this wreckage. From an entire carrier group and multiples escorts what remained were nothing but a thin layer of small metallic pieces from the destroyed ships and the fallen satellite that had been utterly consumed by the fall and the subsequent impact. A third of Osea's Home Fleet was destroyed that day.

 **Shores of Oured Bay, Osea, 02/06/1995, 22:00, Weather: risk of thunder.**

The weather had become a bit unstable due to this little satellite parts shower. The journalist managed to keep their stability of mind despite this utter destruction they witnessed and recorded on their cams or notebooks, but it was not the case of some of the escorting soldiers nearby. Furthermore, three minutes after the cloud of vapor finished settling down, a group of three Osean APCs arrived and one officer came out of it, with a very unkind look.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, you will have to hand me over your cams, recorders, or any data regarding this incident." The officer inquired, moving toward the journalist. Some had felt a bit uneasy and had stepped back next to their cars after these events, with Eugene Senior, Denis Delacre, the Erusean Réactions special envoy and his colleague of ENN (Erusea News Network) and the female journalist from the La Polémica, being the closest to a black car of above average size for a journalist. Indeed, this ZBM 4x4 was a bit too big for a journalist, Delacre had realized when he bought it from the ZBM dealer in Hoffnung before the war. He bought it because it allowed him to have a nearby satellite antenna as a relay.

"And why? Osea is not enforcing censorship on war coverage, as far as I know." The Osean Times journalist asked, not understanding the behavior from this officer of his own country.

"I have nothing to justify. Orders are not letting any events being turned into unofficial Belkan propaganda." The officer replied coldly, staring particularly at Delacre when using the term "Belkan propaganda" he emphasized greatly. For him these Ustian journalists were far too kind with the Belkans, and almost showed support to the Belkan representative. The Sapin were not that far either. The Erusean were not supporting Belkan directly, they knew they couldn't back them without attracting Osea's ire, but they had been undermining their effort of spreading their influence on the Usean continent. And that Osean Times guy, he wasn't holding in higher esteem either: they were a leftist newspaper that had published they should consider peace talks as a way to end this war. This war couldn't be ended by any other way but the utter destruction of Belka for this Osean officer.

"And, Major Ransack, how will the detention of all of these journalists not being turn into at least anti-Osean propaganda?" Delacre asked with a sly tone, after reading the officer name on his plate, thinking this officer would have a bit of logic behind his Osean brain. Now the small four-persons group they were all near Delacre stepped back, even closer to his car.

"You can either give us what we want, or..." Ransack stopped before he pulled out his handgun and threatened Delacre with it. "Your death will be unnoticed with the EMP disaster having destroyed the CCTV cams network, and we will just said you had been invited to the Discovery this evening and as such erasing you from history will not be that hard, see ?" He finished his threat before raising the gun right at the height of the Ustian's head.

"I might have a counter-offer you should consider." The Ustian said quite calmly, despite being threatened by a gun at only one meter of his head.

"And what? You should obey like your OBC and World Times colleague" Ransack rudely retorted, with those two journalists having complied. Yet it was understandable, as OBC was hand-fed by the Osean government, and World Times from the Federation of Central Usea did not want to risk endangering the talks of an alliance between its territories and the Osean Federation, and known through some leaks as the Dual Alliance.

"This!" He took opportunity that the Osean used the arm holding the gun to point at those two journalists, and at turn his look away for an instant, thus not threatening him for an instant. He had got out some self-defense gas canister, and while pulling away the arm holding the gun, sprayed its content at the Osean officer. But its content wasn't some pepperoni or teargas. No, it was an illegal content some Ustian resistance member handed to him during the occupation, even if the HNO in the ingredient list should have warned him of what it was. But the brown gas it produced by the reaction on the Osean skin and the scream of pain of the Osean officer that had fell to his knees, reminded him of what the resistance used to dislodge some Belkans. Only four Belkans had survived this chemical attack.

"Eugene, climb, we've got to go!" he shouted as he run for his car, with some Osean soldier which were accompanying Ransack being a bit reluctant to shoot.

"On vous suis, Ustian (we are following you)." The Eruseans did not think twice of this situation that was turning not well at all. Definitely not. The Sapin journalist followed them too. Taking advantage of the temporary surprise of the Osean soldiers, who didn't know at first what their assignment was before they were picked by this Ransack major and brought here.

One did fight off its struggle and fire at the black four-wheel car, hurting one of the Erusean journalist. He should have aimed at its tires rather than aiming for its passengers, as the car's engine came to life pretty quickly and the ZBM went out of their scope. Then, a very severely wounded Ransack shouted at them:

"Stop firing with those, chase them and hunt them down with the APCs. I want them dead or alive." He said, despite the pain torturing him and his face having been corroded by the vaporized nitric acid.

"But sir, you're in critical conditions. We need to bring you to Oured Central Health Center." A soldier pointed out, still a bit taken aback that those Ustian resistance members had given this chemical weapon to a journalist as a self-defense weapon.

"Fine, two APCs should be enough against their Belkan-made car. Make them understand ours are better." Ransack agreed with great reluctance that he wasn't in a fighting state, to his regret. His somewhat slightly fat face had surely gone slimmer right now, but nitric acid was not a very skin-healthy product.

 **Osean Highway, Oured, 02/06/1995, 22:30, Weather: little fog.**

The fall of so many satellite parts had created a bit of fog, and the blast had pushed it toward the Osean shores. This had allowed the ZBM to overrun its pursuer for a bit of time, but not for that long.

"They're catching with us!" Eugene shouted, seeing in the right mirror the threatening silhouette of the Osean APC getting closer despite the Belkan-made car having reached the one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour.

"We are not done yet." Delacre tried to comfort his friend, while looking a bit at the injured Erusean on the back seat. He hadn't been severely injured, only a bullet to the left leg that by luck hadn't go through the femoral artery, but there was a great likelihood it went through the sciatic nerve, as the Erusean wasn't feeling his leg anymore. In any case, he was in need of emergency. Bringing him to Oured Central Health Center was out of choice, obviously.

And he was a bit right when he said he wasn't done yet. By luck those APCs had not they standard grenade-launcher, but only small anti-air armament that wasn't made to fire at ground vehicle.

He saw one opportunity to lose those APCs for good, or at least for a great amount of time. There was a transfer way up ahead - a highway entree and sortie linked together, which was often dangerous-. And a heavy truck was approaching, already setting its light to indicate it would be coming on the highway. Delacre put the pedal to the metal, forgetting for a moment they were carrying a wounded on the back seat. He knew he wouldn't appreciate it but being behind bars would always be worse. And so, he cut the road of the heavy truck as he was entering the highway. Of course, its driver tried to maneuver to avoid the collision, but turned his wheel too quickly, thus losing control of his vehicle.

From the first APC, what they saw was a truck getting into a jackknife position, and thus blocking the entire highway. Its driver hit the brakes desperately, but it didn't prevent the crash. Hopefully for them it was not a fuel delivery truck, or they would have ended roasted. No, it was a wood delivery truck, and as such, their APC was further damaged when the cargo of the truck went loose, almost crushing the armored truck and heavily damaged the other one. Both team manning them could only cursed at that Ustian journalist that had chosen not to comply and had shown them that not every men of the allied countries was fully supporting the allied forces.

Now Delacre was driving at dazzling speed, despite him not being on the highway anymore. He knew the Oseans must be desperate to come to this kind of methods. Obviously, just getting in the bureau his radio was renting him would not be enough to be safe. No, he needed to go somewhere where the Osean laws had no grasp on him.

"Yeah, I agree, but the Sapin Border is way too far. And do not speak about getting South either. There will be roadblock in less than an hour, and I doubt your jeep can go through them." Eugene senior expressed his pessimism, not believing this crazy chase could end well in any way.

"I know, Eugene, I know. We just need to reach the Peace Park. Then we should be fine." The Ustian responded with a bit of confidence, having now set his course to this place where Osea's rule was coming to an end. "By the way, how are you, Erusean?" He asked to the ENN journalist, which had still a pretty nasty wound on his leg. Putting a proper dressing was quite hard in those conditions, but at least the pressure point his Sapin colleague from the La Polémica had made had diminished the bleeding.

"But then where?" The other Erusean journalist inquired, trying to figure which place would be safe from Osea's wrath in the heart of its capital they were heading to.

 **Peace Park, Oured, Osea, 02/06/1995, 23:00, Weather: little rain.**

They had had to go through some roadblock but by luck those consisted mainly of police vehicle put together without anti-tire traps and such. Yet their jeep has not come out of this unscathed. They had suffered a bit of fire from some handguns, and Delacre was now sure they had an oil leak, and the windshield would not made that far if they took any more fire. But right now, he was finally arriving where he wanted to be.

The Peace Park might be bearing an almost paradoxical name, being located just in front of the Osean Defense Secretary. After all, it had been built on the cinders of a working-class district, the last in the inner city of Oured. It had burned during the last conflict between Osea and Belka, fifty years ago, due to a Belkan bomber missing its target, the imperial-like building which its entrance was behind a raw of high columns made of marble, to show Osea's might and wealth. He could have done some bras d'honneur to those Oseans that blindly condemned them, but the Ustian journalist was a bit too busy finding the entrance of the Park. Thirty second later, he would cross the road and the street walk, before rushing in the entrance. Luckily for him the park was empty by that time.

"He's turning into the Peace Park!" An Osean police officer bellowed on the radio. He was a bit reluctant to follow him there, due to the park being on a quite sloppy terrain. Yet it was sloping toward the embassy area.

"If I follow him, I'm going to screw the shock absorbers on the stairs in that park. Just circle around." Another police officer advised his colleague, trying to be rational when this whole evening had been utterly depleted of reason for the Oseans, following this new disaster.

"Circle around if you want. An APC will arrive shortly to pursue them." A sterner voice announced, belonging to their commander.

And soon, all around the Peace Park, police cars began to fill the space, not knowing exactly where the jeep would exit it from. Yet this was a long job, which would not be completed as quick as the commander would have wanted. The sloped terrain wasn't helping, and the fact that at some point passageways for walkers or bikes and their barriers were blocking the road either. As such, these pesky Ustians might have taken a good shortcut, he had to admit that with great reluctance.

A bit before the APC arrived, two motorbikes of the Oured Police District tried to chase the fugitives. Their shock absorbers were a bit reinforced, and so they thought they could catch up with the black vehicle, which they saw its light being shaken each time he was stepping down sets of stairs, which was quite often, but only by group of two or three, nothing unbearable for the good shock absorbers of this ZBM. But being shaken was a bit harder to bear for the wounded Erusean.

"Brilliant Idée this shortcut. But I'm bleeding again with all this remue-ménage (fuss)!" He expressed his concern toward the success of their uncertain endeavor. He would not pass out due to the bleeding right now, but if this went on for more than ten minutes, he would require medical care.

"We are halfway there. Hang in there, mon cher." Delacre replied, trying to be confident. He had just to go straight through the Peace Park and they would reach neutral territory. Or what he thought could be considered as neutral territory in the middle of Oured.

"Damn, there are bikes pursuing us!" Eugene pointed out, as he heard the sound of two small vehicle and saw their lights on at full light, maybe in an effort to blind the driver of the pursued car.

"Let them gain a bit." Delacre hit the brakes, thus surprising the two bikes who were definitively gaining ground in this kind of sloped terrain, possessing less powerful engine braking than he did.

"Mike here, we are gaining ground on them." The first OPD biker radioed, sure to catch them before this APC arrived, and thus already having the idea of claiming the glory of this capture. Despite his self-confidence, and his bike strong shock absorbers, they hoped this chase would not last too long, or what they would gain from this capture will go right in the pocket of their mechanics for the bikes, and their physiotherapist due to the backache riding through small set of staircase would cause them.

"Say hello to inertia!" Delacre wished them good luck, as he pulled the handbrake, making the car stall for some second. The engine would not like this, being stopped at such speed in the middle of such dangerous terrain. But it was already better than the fate of the bikers following them: as the black car, which had switched off its lights, came to a stop, they did not realize in time, and both hit the back of the car. Both Osean cops flew over the car, before landing in the grass nearby. They would definitively get more than a small backache from this chase.

"And now we have to make up for lost time. Avanti." Eugene said, as he was now hearing a faint engine sound, a one that was a bit further, but that was surely the one of an APC, expressing all his stress in his last world, one he had remembered from a reportage in Emmeria. The car just came to life without any care for the engine. Delacre forgot a bit to care about it right now and focused a bit more on getting to safety.

"Just a few more minutes." Delacre informed, as they turned a bit on their right after some fountain which was featuring a fox submitted by a stork, inspired by some old tale, with the fox often interpreted as Belka, which in the story succeeded in conning the stork, but ended up being beaten as their own game. Some people would see it as the fact than in the two conflict between Osea and Belka prior to the current one, Osea was initially pushed back but their economy always allow then to recover those initial losses and fight back until victory. But would they a third time?

 **Peace Park, Oured, Osea, 02/06/1995, 23:15, Weather: little rain.**

Getting out of this park they had gone through by unconventional mean, and at the cost of some pain for the wounded Erusean had taken them little than ten minutes. Maybe Delacre had forgotten it was three kilometers long, and thus it would take so many times to go through it, given that the topology of this place with the sloped ways punctured with little set of stairs had decreased their speed dramatically. Still, it would decrease the speed of their pursuers too. As such, when he finally ended up at the Southern door of the Park, the pursuing APC was at least two hundred meters behind them, when he only had to cross the street. To a building that he was recognizing quite easily, having visited it two weeks ago.

Maybe the inhabitants of this building were waiting for them, or they would have figured where fleeing journalist would head to, if pursued by Oseans in the heart of Osea. Because the metallic fence, was slightly open, enough for his car to enter, he thought. However, he wasn't the only one to recognize the medieval-castle-like building, with his four medieval tower and inner court with one tower featuring the flag of his countries' current enemy.

"You brought us to the Belkan embassy?" Eugene realized, knowing very well that Osean weren't welcome there. Maybe they could make an exception for a fleeing Osean journalist pursued by Oseans, he thought on a side note, as the car was already crossing the street.

"Yeah, I do. Let's hope Frau Reutner is still friendly with the Ustians." He said, as he was already slowing down to stop just after the high metallic fence.

But the APC had gained ground while he was crossing the road cautiously. And as such, when they entered, with the APC right behind them, they were afraid that Osean would finally catch up with them. Yet they did not know all the secrets of this embassy. They had only crossed the fence that a set of hydraulic pistons were sticking out of the concrete, having been concealed under a simple pavement. As such, the front of the APC was raised like it was nothing with a great metallic crumpling noise, stopping the armored truck in an oblique posture. However, the front of the APC was still a bit above the soil of the Belkan embassy. Another set of pistons was set in motion, destroying the sidewalk in front of the metallic fence, but making this time the APC in a near vertical stance, almost oscillating on his back.

After this little show of technical ingenuity, the metallic fence was closed once again, and some Belkan guards began coming out of the building and taking the fugitive in the inside, not minding that much that one of them was an Osean for once. One of them had come with a halberd, which was surely not a common weapon to use against APCs, and belonged more to a museum than an embassy, stepped toward the stuck armored Osean vehicle. Then, using the head of his halberd, he pushed the unstable APC, making it fall flat on its ceiling, while saying with a somewhat rejoiced voice:

"Du kannst nicht vorbei! Betreten Verboten. (you shall not pass, No trespassing)!"

Rendered fully unstable, the APC fall hard on its ceiling, surely hurting a bit the soldiers it was carrying. If they were not that harmed, they were indeed disoriented, as the ones that got out of it walk like they were drunk or something. Many cursed at this Belkan soldier, which was almost rejoiced to see the chaos outside, in the heart of Osea.

 **Belkan** **embassy, Oured, Osea, 02/06/1995, 23:20, Weather: little rain.**

Eugene had been quite surprised to enter in the three meters-high hard oak double doors, reinforced with rows of nails that made the entrance look very aggressive. He then crossed the court and enter in the building by a modern glass door, which contrast heavily with the medieval-like front door. Some red carpet was welcoming him over the soil made of white marble. On the white walls were hanged old portrait of defunct Belkan knights, politicians or other Belkans he didn't know, while some featured tapestries depicting medieval scene like chases or battlefields. They weren't that realistic, exaggerating the size of some characters, to show their greatness or their importance in those depicted battles.

Then the soldiers escorting them stopped before a painted wooden door that indicated "AN's Vetretersbüro" (AN's representative' office). He wished he was with some translators, because he couldn't understand those two words. But he was sure Delacre did, because Ustians and Belkans had a lot more history in common than Oseans, and especially the Oseans born into the Oured district like he was. And what foster this idea was the fact that Delacre entered immediately when they heard from the other side of the door:

"Kommt herein" The voice said. He had already heard that Belkan-sounding voice, when she was mocking their representative at the AN.

"It's come in, mister Eugene Senior." The same voice explained, and he followed Delacre in the doorway. The room was a round one, being situated at the bottom of one of the four towers. A woman was sat behind an old-looking wood office with a polished marble surface, with two old armchairs waiting for them apparently. Behind the woman was a great fireplace decorated with a shield depicting a double-headed Belkan eagle. Of course, the fireplace was off, since the weather was warm enough.

"It's quite rare for an Osean to enter in this place." He said as his eyes wandered a bit, trying to look a bit at the outside from the only windows of the room. There was a lot of blue lights outside of the place, meaning that only international laws were ensuring their relative safety.

"Your Erusean colleague is being stabilized as we speak, and his days should not be in danger. Momentarily of course." She ensured them, as the two journalists were finally in the armchairs facing her. Delacre seemed to be way more at ease than the Osean. Maybe the Osean was fearing his family could suffer retaliation or his colleagues.

"What are we going to become? I cannot stay in here forever. I mean, the place is nice, but..." Eugene began to point out, still a bit unphased of being in the lair of his countries' greatest enemy.

"You will both wait here for some days until the situation is eased. I will not trade people with Oseans." She tried to reassure the slightly nervous Osean. Yet her determination and the strength she had already shown during her verbal joust with Wilson were playing a bit in their favor for now.

"I guess you're offering us political asylum?" Delacre asserted, quite sure they were more precious to Osea than anything right now. Because they had seen its power failed. They would have shared a weakened image of Osea if they had had the opportunity to share this news.

"Indeed, even Osea is respecting the international laws. Because they cannot allow themselves to jeopardize diese geheimnisse Vertrag mit Sudden Usea!" Reutner explained to them why Osea wanted to have a clean war, even if it was not the case since yesterday, when they had revoked this unilateral non-aggression treaty.

"I did not know the Osean were planning such a treaty with the Southern Usean states." Delacre advocated, caught off guard by this sudden revelation, and thus translating to Eugene what Reutner just said seconds ago.

"I did not know either. Any other big scoop you're keeping in secrecy?" Eugene wanted to know if he could at least learn anything from his sojourn here.

"Oh, es wird... Sorry there will be a big one soon. Therefore, you'll both accompany me at the AN tomorrow. Be ready for some big revelation." She teased both journalist like some teenagers revealing a teacher would be missing tomorrow. "Have a good night, gentlemen, this meeting is over." She left them caught off guard even more, while some Belkan in Feld Grau fatigues escorted them to some rustic chambers. As they left, they heard her having very unkind talks with the Osean authorities. And they were now wondering how she would manage to make them enter into the Assembly of Nations' building.

On the way they were informed of the good state of all the other journalist, which had received similar introductions speeches, but in their relative language, by the interprets of the embassy. And now all of them were sharing the same question: what would those revelations be? Another Wunderwaffen? No, this wouldn't be surprising by now. The surprise would only be far greater than all they had foreseen until now. The war was going to take an unexpected turn that had not been foreseen by anyone, except a few persons, with Ursula Reutner being one of them.

 **Assembly of Nation, Oured, Osea, 3/06/1995, 15:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

The morning had been quite busy for all the journalist. To be honest it had been busy for all the people inside the Belkan embassy. They couldn't move out of it at first, since the Belkan soil was only inside of the embassy, not on the sidewalk were APCs and Osean police cars were removing any possibility of getting out of it, having blocked the whole building, giving to their journalist the reason that Belka had welcomed in there a dangerous Ustian terrorist, which was just a journalist that misunderstood the consigns of the resistance member when he told him to go have a self-defense weapon. A short conversation with Brønsted cleared this issue:

"Herr chemist, you said you gave me a paralyzing agent. Not some aqua regalis!" Delacre had almost shouted at the resistance cell leader, feeling a bit guilty to have use such harmful weapon on an Osean soldier. Yet the intentions of that soldier were not good at all, so he was not that much guilty.

"I think you misunderstood area C-33 with area Z-33. Those two letters are a bit similar in this language, maybe if the resistant had said them in Belkan you wouldn't have had this issue. But in the end, it was efficient, isn't it?" Brønsted managed to steer the talk in another direction, not wanting to be hold responsible of this incident that was Osea's doings in the first place.

"I think his face was almost melt by the acid. A bit like Two-Face, but he will be a No-Face." Delacre tried to have some fun of the Osean's demise to ease up the guilt.

"There I recognize the radio journalist that make me laugh when listening to you." Brønsted then smirked with a mad scientist voice before wishing with a more serious voice: "Good luck in Oured, you'll need it."

But right now, they weren't the unluckiest. The unluckiest one here was the Nordennavikian representative, who five minutes ago had taken the full brunt of the tantrum the Osean representative throw at him, after discovering they had let the Belkan enter in the Assembly of Nation. The territory around it was international ground and was often watched over by neutral countries uninvolved in conflicts. Nordennavik had been chosen two years ago to ensure the safety of this place, having a long history of undeniable neutrality. And now obviously the Osean representative Wilson was regretting this choice.

"You helped them get in! You allow terrorist acting against Osea to move freely on Osean ground!" Wilson shouted at the Nordennavikian representative, who was flanked by two high-ranking officers, captains of the Nordennavikian Royal Guard that were ensuring the safety of this international territory. They were in elegant royal blue uniforms with a white tie and some national distinctions, while the representative was in an ultramarine and blue-grey tuxedo with a tie reminding of the ice cap's color. Their tanned skin characteristic of their origin below the polar circle was giving then a bit of contrast with their ties and shirt sleeves. And they didn't move that much when the Osean shouted at them. They were growing in a cold country after all, and they were known to be able to stay as cold as the ice they saw almost more often than someone serving at Valais Air Base.

"You know the rules, mister Wilson. National police forces have no authority here. If they want to arrest someone, you need an international warrant." The Nordennavikian representative, a man named Kanuk Grendel respond with the notorious calm and patience of his compatriots. He was almost enjoying the spectacle of this infuriated Osean while he was standing in front of him, with arm crossed, and the fact that he was one head above him, which allow him to give him a thousand-yard stare with ease.

"You should have made your soldiers watch your sewers network better, Mr. Wilson." One of the two captain spoke with irony filling his voice, having been informed of how the Belkans managed to get here despite the tight police grid the Osean force had established all around the Belkan embassy. It was quite funny, the captain admitted it. But he knew he would laugh about that in due time, not now.

"There's a proverb in our country: when watching your prey, never look at one breathing hole only. Or the otter you're hunting will just breath elsewhere and you'll lose it." The second captain quoted this ancestral proverb, dating from the era in which his people were surviving by hunting otters and living in Igloos.

"That doesn't matter. You're allowing the presence of enemies of the Osean Federation!" Wilson shouted once again, losing his nerves while the three Nordennavikians maintained a neutral smile on their faces.

"It's enough. I agree they committed some offenses against your forces, but from what I've heard from them, self-defense can be claimed." The Nordennavikian retorted while uncrossing his arms in a negative gesture, the Osean beginning to reach the limits of the legendary Nordennavikian coldness.

"Self-defense? They harmed an officer using chemical weaponry!" Wilson ranted, fed up by this overzealous neutrality demonstrated by those Annean people.

"The officer was threatening to shoot them down and the journalist was thinking the gas canister he used contained a paralyzing agent. You know, mislabeling can occur." Grendel ended the talk, taking profit of his greater size to denigrate the Osean representative by not looking at him at all. Then, as he understood the talk wouldn't go anywhere, he left for the Assembly of Nation's building, leaving a still angered Osean behind him. Of course, the fact that he chose to fully ignore him rather than getting in his game was only infuriating this Osean even more. And when he was about to enter, he still heard the Osean cursing at them:

"Damn Northern people with their neutrality. They should go back to their igloos." he referred to the idea many Osean had made of the Nordennavikian people at the beginning of this century: almost uncivilized people living in those ice houses. But right now, they had become a local power, with the discovery of natural resources accessible due to the ice cap melting a bit more since the beginning of the century. Furthermore, they had good icebreaker and hovercraft fleets, allowing them to trade with a good number of countries and fasten the transportation of some goods by going through or above the arctic polar ocean.

 **Assembly of Nation, Oured, Osea, 3/06/1995, 15:15, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Wilson had spent a bit of time outside, trying every legal branch and any ways to shunt the neutrality of the Assembly of Nation's territory. But unfortunately, every tries was unsuccessful, or couldn't be successful: if they issued international warrant, they would have to admit that the Osean army, on its own and without the approbation of the Defense Secretary, had tried to encroach on the press' liberty. And with them always shouting at the Belkan they were the land of freedom; it would almost make Ursula Reutner die from laugh. Of course, invading this neutral international territory with military forces would be out of question either, this would only result in the failure of the negotiation with the Southern Usean States, which had already been stalled by the EMP disaster. After all it was a military, industrial and commercial alliance, and those Usean States would not want an alliance with a country having lost half of its industrial power and with a great decrease in military strength. Still, they could still jeopardize their economy through their traders to force them to sign, with hidden provisions in this treaty. It would create another Mt Schirm case, but Osea wasn't at its first in matter of ruining the economy of other local powers to rule them through corrupt official and officers without having to invade anybody. This was the best way to act, Wilson thought. This little inner brainstorming had diminished his anger. But the people he saw as he sat on his siege of representative of the Osean Federation made his anger rose to the same level as before.

" So, Fraulein Reutner, what is this little scoop you promised us the exclusivity?" Eugene asked, still a bit uneasy after the walk in the sewers of Oured, which were not perfumed with Erusean roses to be honest.

" They are a bit late, I must admit. But don't worry, it will arrive soon. They just want to have everyone here. Especially Mr. Wilson." The Belkan representative said calmly, while looking on her cell phone with a bit of impatience. A small message had just arrived. Its content was the following: "IST ER DORT?" (is he here?). Reutner knew they were talking of Wilson. They couldn't miss this golden opportunity to humiliate the Osean once more.

" Speaking of the devil, he's here, Signora Reutner." The Sapin journalist of La Polémica pointed out, having noticed the angered Osean quite easily, as he almost run into some representative on his way to his seat.

" Then let's send the invitation to the party crasher for Osea, should we?" Reutner asserted happily, typing hastily two letters on her small cell phone " JA". The Osean had sown the wind, and now they would reap the storm.

Nearly all people were sat on their chair, ready for the session of today. Some were wondering how it would go. Would it be another clash between Osea and Belkan with the involved countries counting the scores? Or would they talk about some other important subject for the uninvolved countries: Ulysses? Because, to be fair, many of the uninvolved countries were threatened by the fragment's courses. And if they impacted while both Osea and their allies and Belka had self-destructed in this stupid war, their world would enter the third millenary as a field of ruins, and with humankind threatened and divided even more, instead of a hopeful humanity looking forward to the future.

It was a certainty no representatives nor any journalists were ready to this event. Two minutes and twenty seconds after Ursula Reutner's response to this unknown identified as "AB", the huge white screen used to display data was unrolled without anyone ordering it to. And it stayed in this posture, despite the efforts of the IT team to try rolling it back. This surprised a bit the representatives, but not that much: electronics were submitted to a great number of issues since the EMP disaster. Yet some began to ask what was going on. Then, the light blue light came to life, indicating the projector was getting ready to display something. But no one had activated anything. And with the projector being attached to the ceiling of the main room of the Assembly of Nation, which said room was six meters high, it was a bit difficult to access its off switch. Furthermore, they had bought a battery-equipped tropicalized model that was meant to be a bit more EMP-resilient than the precedent, and as such, unplugging it would change nothing.

For some second, it showed the logo of the Assembly of nation, a polar projection of their world in white on a light blue, with laurel leaves surrounding it. But it began to scramble, like if the signal was jammed. Or if the signal was being hacked right now. For some seconds, the picture was even more shaken, becoming blurry and unrecognizable, while a high pitch buzzing sound was heard. One of the more worried one was Wilson: he was sure this was Belka's doing. But they were not doing that just to show they informatic prowess.

One whole minute after the projector had almost come to life on its own, the picture it was displaying finally unblurred, thus becoming visible to all representatives in the room. It was depicting a round shape, and in this round, was the symbol of what was causing the allied frontlines to be stalled since the half of May, and in gold on a black background instead of white on blue. The lower half of the disc was featuring the hemicylindrical lower half of Excalibur, while the upper half had this cross of Sainte Victoire shape, with the double cross having an upper shorter guard and a lower longer one. Coming the center and going rightward, a small Berkut could be seen, and going leftward, the other forward-swept wing plane Belka had unveiled in this war : the ADFX-01 Morgan, which many people outside of Belka still only knew as the "Wesson-UFO's", since Kupchenko had made no concrete announcement of his name to the press who had spread this other name in the world since the first sight of it in March over the Osean city. And in the outline of the circle, the words "PENDRAGON PROJEKT" was written in old gothic-like letters. Then a voice was heard, and when it was speaking, it caused small lines to come out of the circle, varying with the intensity in length and orientation of which line would appear.

" Greetings, esteemed members of the Assembly of Nation. I can guess you have all seen the SOLG plunging into the Oured Bay last night." A voice with a surprising Osean accent spoke, instead of a more Belkan-sounding or Yukte-sounding voice that Kupchenko possessed, and that people were expecting right now. This left Wilson uneasy and satisfied in the same time : if they weren't hearing Kupchenko, it could mean that this Ustian merc had succeeded in her assassination attempt, but in the same time, having to admit that Osean aces had rallied Kupchenko's side would be a bad publicity for the allied forces.

" Can you define this abbreviation? I have never heard of it" The Erusean representative asked, eager to learn what had caused two of his compatriots to have great troubles with the Osean military, with one still wounded. From what the Belkan representative had said, he was recovering, but he wanted reasons, and a good portion of the Erusean population wanted reasons too.

" SOLG is for Strategic Orbital Linear Gun. An Osean weapon platform who WAS in geosynchronous orbit and armed with nuclear armament." The Osean-sounding voice responded, emphasizing greatly the preterit of these verbs, wanting to signify clearly this weapon platform was a thing of the past. But what struck most of the representative was the fact that Osea used nuclear weapon in space. Such things had been forbidden since the 1980's, to ensure nuclear fallout could never happened in case of collision and hereby cause incidents such as the EMP disaster.

" Henceforth I accuse Osea of lying to the entire world by not respecting the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty of 1979, which they had ratified and passed as a law." The Osean-voice was sterner in this assertion as he was speaking against his own nation he had ceased to believe in since half a decade by now.

" This is outrageous! I will not let some deserters dictate our conduct." Wilson bellowed at the screen, wondering who could ever betray Osea in favor of Belka. This wasn't making sense to him, but most of his behavior was nonsensical from some point of view.

" Ha, your little game is finally revealed, Osean. The world will know your lies. They will see through the Osean lies!" A very happy Belkan representative pointed a threatening finger at the Osean who was starting to lose his temper.

" I haven't called here to hear you ranting, Wilson." The unknown interlocutor cut the Osean short, as he was throwing some more insult at the Belkan representative. Some electronic noise was heard, and the mike of Wilson went off, causing him not to be heard any more by a great percentage of the representatives.

" But to show you that Osea has no superiority in any way, even in the so-called moral high ground they wanted you to believe they possess some. The truth is, they don't!" He clarified his thought, showing to the AN Osea had only the financial superiority over Belka.

" Thanks for showing those interesting facts, but why do you need to announce them in the Assembly of Nation?" The representative of Emmeria inquired why they were acting in such a way, since in comparison the explanation of the EMP disaster had been publicized through dead drops to journalists.

" I have more things to say than just this." He gave a bit of a cryptic answer before another electronic noise was heard, and the picture displayed changed a bit : the circle was put in some corner of the screen, while a dynamic view of the solar system featuring the four terrestrial planets, and the Ulysses fragment that had come close to the orbit of Mars by now. They were supposed to hit the Earth by the year 1999.

" Some pilot who went against us said we had the power to shield Belka from those fragments when they would fall on the world. Or even to deflect them on our enemies." He quoted this Ustian merc he thought was dead for a time, but he wasn't so sure in this very moment.

" But I think we have the power to protect mankind from extinction. To use the Sword of the Kings not only for Annihilation, but for Salvation " He announced what would change this war they were fighting, and the world they were fighting in for centuries.

" I won't say it's a bad thing." The representative of the Islands of Prefanesia, a small nation at the extreme South-East of the Usean continent began to spoke, finding that those Belkan warmongers were finally getting some sense. " But do your Rald leaders know about this decision?" He pursued, a bit surprised that a far-right party would authorize such an act, which would surely help Belka gain the favors of some Usean and Annean countries but was not Belkan-like. Sure, this was an act that would fill them with pride, but it seemed not very conform to the ideas of the Rald Partei which was very Belka-centric and would not do such acts. The Rald leaders would more likely use Excalibur to deflect the asteroids on Osea and Yuktobania, trying to make Belka the only power left of this world. Yet they would only have a world of cinders to rule. And since the Ulysses fall could cause some nuclear-winter-like scenario, this wasn't something to do for anyone playing in the long run.

" You're right to ask me that. Thus, I can announce the secession of South Belka officially. The Lander of Blumenberg has joined the Lander of Tauberg in this decision. I hope our other Belkan Kameraden in the Eastern cities will realize on which side they wanted to be." The Osean-sounding voice announced the fracture of Belka's unity. Once more, Belka was divided. This stunning news, coupled to the astonishment of most of the countries threatened by Ulysses to know they had a chance of salvation, resulted in some seconds of silence.

" Can we get a name for the articles?" Delacre asked, breaking the silence, using the mic of the Belkan representative, hoping that after these great announcements the anonymity would fall.

" My name itself does not matter. But you can have it. I'm Andrew Berry, former captain of the Osean Shadow Eagle squad, and now Gault 4." The voice let down his mask but kept the logo of the Pendragon Projekt on the screen.

" What does the Belkan representative have to say about that? About this betrayal of this man who had already betrayed his motherland?" Wilson inquired with an ever more angered voice, having pulled a small battery-powered speaker from his breast pocket, as his formal one was out of commission for an unknown reason. If those Belkans could hack the projector, why couldn't they hack anything in this room?

" I never said I wasn't supporting them. From now on I'm not the representative of the Principality of Belka, but of the seceding territories. A wise man once said you need to learn to betray your country to save it." She announced her approval of the secession to the Assembly of Nation, knowing the Outside affairs Belkan minister would revoke her on the spot, but they would not be able to send their agents to force her out of the embassy when in war with the country in which the embassy was in.

" I'm glad to hear this news. The Confederation of South Belka is opened to any negotiation with the Allied Forces, including Osea or not." Berry congratulated the representative of having the bravery to betray her motherland like he did five years ago.

" Yuktobania won't differ from the Osean Federation. We accept nothing but unconditional surrender." The Yukte representative took over in order to replace Wilson, as the Osean credibility had died down since the reveal of them using nukes in space a bit sooner.

" I could say the same, representative Tsanev. We won't lay our weapon until the CSB is at peace with its neighbors. Even if we have to enforce it." Gault 4 stated with a rigid tone, showing no fear of having to fight the Rald Partei-led North Belka and the allied forces altogether.

" We will fight in the air, in the lands. We will fight above the mountains and above the lakes. We will fight to protect our people. And you will only have the spread blood of yours as a consolation." He ended up this unofficial broadcast, going a bit philosophical in the end. Andrew knew they had to act quickly if they wanted to keep fighting. The complex around Excalibur and in Blumenberg had a bit of industrial power, but not as much as the ones of Hoffnung. And Excalibur wouldn't be able to defend Hoffnung from all side, especially if the North attacked them too.

Would they managed to displace those industries would be vital. Yet already a good fourth of the civilian of Hoffnung had already left, either for Sudentor, the south Belka or the North.

Still Kupchenko had always had good relationship with the ZHW (Hoffnung Hoch Wirtschaft), the cutting-edge industry group that had helped greatly in the Pendragon Projekt. They could have hope that this industry transfer would succeed.

Belka had known its second secession of the decade today. First Ustio in 1988, and now, seven years later South Belka was willing to obtain independence. Those secessionists were officially alone, no country wanted to attract to themselves the ire of Osea by backing up this soon-to-be-born country that was possessing Excalibur, the Wunderwaffen having caused so many defeats to Osea on its soil.

But who could not show a bit of sympathy toward those people who commit to help them fend off the Armageddon coming from space? Many Northern Usean countries, including of course Erusea, which had always complicated relationship with the Oseans despite this country having helped put an end to their civil war in the eighteenth century, would surely try to help this nascent Belkan State informally. They weren't the only one they had gained sympathy from: the three Annean nations, the two constitutional monarchy that Nordennavik and Emmeria were, and the Federal Republic of Estovakia. Those three countries were even more threatened than the Usean ones, as they lacked the great amount of resources the FCU, Amber and Erusea could invest in Stonehenge, leaving the Annean continent pretty much defenseless against the Ulysses.

And finally, following last calculation, South Osea was threatened too. As such, it was understandable that countries such as Aurelia, San Martin or Leasath would show a sympathy to those people having concern outside this war. This would maybe cause the Leasathian contractor to doubt about who to support, and their delivery could turn the tide in some way or another if they kept doing them or not. Aurelia on the other hand had a more specific relationship with Belkan peoples, since some battles in their civil war of 1982 had been won for the republicans thanks to the strength of Belkan mercs. They had shown to this people of sailors due to their large seaside relative to the surface of their country that Belkans could fight for some worthy causes sometimes and not just for wealth and pride. In the memorial near the in-building Gayus Tower the names of some Belkan fighter pilots that had chosen to fight even in dire conditions and even die for this republic to live had been added, a rare fact for mercenaries fallen in battle. The few that settle there after this tremendous war were surely trying their best to convince the Aurelian to back a bit these Belkan separatist, even if it was just by refusing to send supplies of raw materials, even if it would be at the risk of causing joblessness.

 **Mausoleum Bunker, Schayne Plains, Belka, 03/06/1995, 21:00, Weather: light cloud coverage**

But two people who hadn't listen to this broadcast because they had no radio outside the ones onboard a Berkut, and the few other planes there were in the bunker they were hiding in, at least could see something, and maybe get a glimpse at what was happening.

They had a rough day, refitting the Su-47 Kupchenko almost left to rust here was a hard task, including many electronics that were a bit unknown for the both. Sure, they had both studied warplanes maintenance in their respective studies. Yet Kellerman had done his studies decade ago when plane like F-104 Starfighters were still used and Iskanda had few chances that hers covered how to maintain a craft that was for now only produced in Belka, with Osea having applied all their financial and political might to prevent Belka to gain anybody from selling their high-tech planes to foreign nations. And since most of Belka was surrounded by Osea or its allied, it was not that hard. Still, the North Sea was opened and through the Northern countries of Wellow and Nordennavik they could sell their technology under false names and shell companies.

Still, they were almost sure it would fly. Belkan Qualität was known to be quite durable and being able to endure much more punishment than other country would produce. After all, Pixy's Eagle had survived losing a wing four times. That alone could atone for the durability of the Belkan aircraft. And Kupchenko was surely quite meticulous with his plane, so it had been surely well maintained before it was left here as souvenirs of a previous life.

As such, they were a bit stargazing, with Kellerman having seen during the last evening there were some farms not very far, at the border of the forest surrounding this compound. Maybe he could go there to find some other means of subsistence than the survival rations and the meat Iskanda had hunted alongside the little wolfpack two days ago. It was fine to survive, but not a very well-balanced regime, and he knew it was bad to try to fight without being fed correctly.

He would act while Iskanda would be out there flying the Berkut, he was speaking better Belkan than her, it would be better to speak with the local farmer than had a pretty strong accent. He did recognize she had some level of Belkan, which came from having studied a bit in high school when she was in Farbanti, and above all having had a Belkan instructor that had come with some Belkan mechanics when leaving Belka. As such, Kellerman tried to make her speak Belkan most of the time here. If she ran into a Belkan squadron, she could try to talk her way and convinced them in some way that she's not their enemy or anything she wanted to try to negotiate. What she would do after having taken off with the Berkut of Kupchenko, where she would go to battle and for whom did not matter to him a single bit. What matters what that she would survive, and maybe be victorious. To increase her survival rate, he insisted that she remove the SAAMs in favor of something more explosive they had in the arsenal of the Mausoleum. He hoped it would fit her fighting style well, thinking to those static FAEBs she described. It was surely something he would have not thought to use. The new generation was taking the skies from the old. It was the order of things after all.

" In welche Richtung feuert Excalibur jetzt (in which direction is Excalibur firing now)?" She asked, forcing herself to put some tonic accent into her Belkan, to make it sound less foreign to a Belkan ear.

"Tut mir leid, dass ich ihnen nicht mehr sagen kann. In Richtung Weltraums werde ich sagen. (I'm afraid I cannot say much about it. Toward space I would say.)" Kellerman admitted he wasn't someone who could claim to understand what was going through the mind of those two people in charge of Excalibur. Kupchenko was a strategist, always ten steps ahead of everyone. And Hellenseite, he didn't know him close enough to deduce anything about his way of thinking.

Still, the blast were as strong as when they were firing at that Osean space platform, turning the light indigo or turquoise blue light that would usually form the Helligen Kolumne into a bright white flash, with the Sword of King producing Swords of lights that were cutting through the darkness of the night. And those bright flashes were powerful enough to make even the full moon look pale in comparison. They were not doing strikes toward the ground. That kind of shot would be too powerful to be reflected.

" Was denn? In Richtung einer Oseaner Stern Zerstörer vielleicht? (so what? Toward an Osea Star Destroyer?)" She emitted just a crazy theory, since how such weapon could be using such level of power was far beyond her understanding.

"Ich dachte du hat gedacht Belka hat ein Todesstern (I thought you were thinking Belka had a Death Star)? Aber nicht, Osea hat keines solches. (but no, Osea has no such thing)" He refuted such a foolish theory. He knew that there was very few chances Osea had developed something powerful enough to counter the Pendragon Projekt. Or if they had, it must have been vaporized in a thousand pieces by now.

"Ach, ich lache. Aber wenn die Luft so hell wird, bedeutet es sie feuern viel weiter als meiste Zeit. (Yeah, I'm laughing. But if the air becomes so bright it must mean they're firing further away than usually.) " She tried to sum up her thought, which was not very easy in a foreign language she rarely spoke since she arrived in Ustio. She used what she had remembered to understand the Belkan aces or send them invectives and had lost a bit how to do long lasting talks in this language.

"Es stimmt. Aber das hilft uns kaum, all das zu verstehen. (It's right. Yet it is not helping to understand all of this us a single bit)." Kellerman ended the talk, having not succeeded a single bit in understanding the usefulness of firing Excalibur in such a way.

They saw four other shots that evening, but quite spaced in time. Usually Excalibur would fire in rapid succession to fend off saturation attacks, not aiming at a target at one time. To her who had witnessed its fire from up close, it was making no sense. And to him who could not understand Kupchenko since he never was his instructor but only a friend who rarely dueled him, he was not understanding the purpose of such shots fired toward deep space either. And the next day, they saw some other shots, even more spaced in time, but still very energetic ones.

Unbeknownst to them, Excalibur was striking at fragment of Ulysses at a few light minutes of the earth, thus requiring this kind of power. They were of course not as precise as against Osean planes, but some parts were slowly changing their course, due to the energy transmitted influencing their kinetic energy and thus their trajectory. Maybe Earth had a chance of surviving the Armageddon some were professing…

 **End of chapter. When writing the fall of the SOLG on these ships, I thought to the scene of the shot from the Starkiller base, with the beam of light/plasma tearing through the planet in SW7. Instead, the frightened are the Oseans onboard their carrier... Well, I guess this one was a bit political, even if I try to put a bit of an action scene, with this little chase. Of course, the "you shall not pass" is a bit obvious here.**  
 **And now, this is my big change to cannon... Excalibur being used for SALVATION (I guess captain Torres would be happy to hear that…)**  
 **Still, the war is far from over, and now it has just took another turn. The tide of the war had turned again, and the fragile balance of terror had just been shaken by this secession. Who Will still fight? Will the alliance hold despite those change in the enemy the sides will be fighting? You will see all of this in the next battle chapter…**

 **Okay, I try to put some "suspense" here. I sincerely hope you'll like the changes to canon Strangereal, and as such feel free to review, favorize and comment…**  
 **Bis nächst mal Lesern und Leserinnen** **  
25/01/2020: some grammatical mistakes fixed**


	19. Chapter 11: Operation Battle Axe 2

**Valais Air Base, Ustio, 5/06/1995, 13:00, Weather: little cloud coverage with high mountain current.**

June had finally come, and with it most of the mountains near Valais had lost their snowy color. Of course, the highest ones near the border with Ratio, which were called by this people the Tyran mountains had still a great amount of these eternal snow. Prior to the war, they had shown intent of buying this territory or even some vehemence of conquering it. They thought it was historically theirs because at some point in the medieval era there was a small prosper town on their side of these peaks. Ratioan legends said it had been destroyed by evil Belkans sorcerers in the space of one terrifying night. This false truth had removed any likelihood of a good relationship and good trades between Belka and Ratio more than the mountainous barrier itself. The truth was that it had just been caught up in a gargantuan snow slide. Yet by now Pixy did not know what were the Ratioan intents toward the Valaisian Alps. They were indeed neutral in this war, but neutrality rarely mean lack of aggressivity and backstabbing nowadays. And without the Osean influence to keep them in check, who would prevent them from trying to take these mountains from Ustio that could only come weakened of this conflict for Pixy's point of view, if the wheels of war kept turning

Of course, like any people listening to the radio, he had heard the beginning of the speech at the Assembly of Nation. But only the beginning of it, as only a few seconds later, a very angered Major Perrault turned off the Ustian radio, calling it "informal Belkan propaganda." Pixy was not in the mood to bear another ranting session of weak Osean that could not cope with their lies being revealed.

So, Pixy retreated onboard his Eagle, using the fighters' antenna to listen to Ufree Fm. Even if he missed half of the broadcast due to the hard time he had finding the good frequency in those mountains range that allowed only AM waves to go through, Delacre summed up the news perfectly : the terrific fall of the SOLG that killed more than one thousand sailors in Oured Bay, the announcement of that Andrew Berry for the Pendragon Projekt to decrease the threat of Ulysses and the secession of what was now called the CSB, for Confederation of South Belka. For now, it was just a rogue state that hadn't fully separated from the motherland yet possessing the more powerful Belkan assets in history. And maybe for this reason alone the Rald Partei-led North Belka hadn't waged open war against South Belka right now, since all of Belka, both South and North was in range of Excalibur's strikes.

Obviously, and with the Osean censorship being only partially enacted by the less than ten Osean mens on the base, the news spread like a forest fire in the middle of June after a phosphor bombardment. Hervin had quite a mixed mind about it. He was finding odd the will to fire at Ulysses, but odd in a somewhat good way. The fact that Kupchenko or his protegees led this part of Belka to secession was something he could understand a bit more. After all, him and the people of Belkan origin here, with Nühmer for example had always found quite strange the simple fact that Kupchenko, a man known to be an anarchist, had worked for so long for a far-right dictatorship, on the opposite of any idealistic or political spectrum. He might have needed time to set his plan in motion or used an opportunity at this crucial moment.

Yet right now, Pixy and Crow 2, a man named Nicolas Siemen, had been called for the briefing by Perrault. And both were wondering what this next mission would be, given the context that was a bit agitated to say the least right now. What Osea should do was to try to take advantage of the political chaos within Belka. However, Pixy knew the strength of Belkan pride might make people separated by political ideas agree on one thing: not letting any allied forces planes in Belka.

And as such, he was expecting some highly advanced strategy to capitalize on Belka's current weaknesses. Not a react of the battle that ended on nothing but a straw in favor of Belka. Because it was what he thought they were going into due to the map displayed being once more the area B7R. Sure, they had managed to make the Belkan army bleed, but they would not be close to bleed it dry of pilots before quite a long time.

"Today, the Allied Forces will try to gain hegemony on the B7R. Analysis of the last battle had shown we had a hard time tracking their aircraft at low altitude due to the natural EMIs of this place. As such, the high command thinks it could be possible for us to use stealth planes to infiltrate Belka by making them fly through B7R once you'd have gained control of the airspace. In the meantime, small group of stealth fighters, bombers or scouting craft will try to gather some data on Hoffnung and Sudentor, two major cities in the Belkan military-industrial complex, that will surely be next targets to end Belka's war production." Perrault describe what seemed to Pixy to be a strategy with far too much contingencies and holes, where a single strike of Excalibur could easily jeopardize everything.

"And through where will they go? Tauberg and the Schayne Plains are like a stonewall so well-built you would have trouble getting a knife's blade between two stones of their plasma walls. The great Lakes and Wesson are no good way either." Pixy unbuilt the whole Osean strategy in matter of seconds, and the long sneer Crow 2 let after Pixy threw his replica could mean he had a similar set of minds.

"We had decreased the number of officers getting critical datum such as this intel to decrease the likelihood of leaks. But we have no intention of negotiating anything with either this rogue state the CSB is nor the North Belka. Osea and the allied forces will face this affront and will prevail. By seceding, they have allowed themselves to be vulnerable. Let's remind them what it means to be vulnerable." Perrault retorted, thinking Belka would be vulnerable.

With no point in trying to talk some sense into this Osean officer who would just stick to the rules even if most of the wars broke most of the rules anyway, they left the briefing room. To be fair, Pixy had nothing to care about Osea, Belka or any of both countries' strategies. What he only wanted today would be to finally face the Grabacr squad and avenge his first squad leader's death. This would be his reason to survive up there. He would not allow himself to die before being sure all members of the said squadron are six feet under. But when he took off with his wings and pylons loaded to the brim with anti-air ordnance, he did not know someone was about to take off too, quite far away from Valais Air Base of course, but often destiny like to be twisted in those troubled times.

As he flew away from the base, he was thinking about one of their first battle here, when they had taken down the invasion forces, their Bm-335Ns and their XB-70 Valkyries. He remembered the speech of Koenig, with him having said that the winner of this battle would determine who would win the Belkan war. But now he was starting to doubt in the words of his now missing leader. This war had taken a new step due to the Belka being shattered one more time. Yet in which sense were those steps taken? This was a very good question, Pixy mused, as they received a last good luck message.

"Pixy, please come back alive and with both of your wings." Herr Steller implied, wishing he wouldn't try to set his "Solo Wing" count higher this time.

"Why? Are we out of supplies?" Pixy asked, a bit worried they were affected by the EMP disaster too.

"Not to fix your wing, but we have no more red paint." Steller ended the talk on an almost funny quote. Giving these last moments a bit of fun was nothing but was sometime a bit helpful. And whatever their beliefs were, God knew they would need a bit of help today, Herr Steller realized as the F-15C and F-16C were disappearing from the radar of the base.

 **Mausoleum Bunker, Schayne Plains, Belka, 05/06/1995, 13:20, Weather: light breeze.**

Kellerman had described her the full details of the battle in which he had fought against his former student. It had seen the engagement of HIMAT fighters on both sides, but the Belkan ones such as the F-14W Wildcat, the F/A-18MW Mörder Wespe and the F-4X III Geist were far superior to the only new craft the Osean unveiled, being those F-15F Agile Eagle. Only the numerical advantage the Osean and the Yukte brought on the bargain table had managed to ensure that it ended on a straw. Still, the exchange ratio was not in the favor of the allied forces. So, she had set her course to be there, in the middle of this denied battlespace. She knew the Oseans would surely try once more to break B7R, and the Belkan would try to hold on to it at all cost. After all, Belka were proud warriors that rarely retreated. Or then only did when there was no other way to end a battle, or for Kupchenko's case, when he knew he would achieve victory greater than any short term sacrifice he could had done sooner during their first encounter above B7R for example.

"Bereit für den Start (ready for take-off)?" Kellerman asked, as they had put together the former Su-47 of Kupchenko into the emergency landing system of the Bunker, which could be used in reverse as an emergency launching system in the same way carrier catapult acted. Still the Su-47 was not made for such maneuvers, at least not intended to. She knew it could resist the mechanic stress this sudden acceleration would put the craft through, but it would be hard for her to bear so many Gs in such a short time. She knew those were longitudinal Gs and not vertical Gs, but still, she would feel them.

"Immer bin ich. (Always I am)." She responded with confidence, while the words of Sainte Victoire were echoing in her mind: she would meet her on the battlefield, the apparition had said so. Would that mean she would be victorious again? Technically she had always survived until now, so she had not suffered the ultimate defeat that death is but seeing her brother and sister-in-arms being swapped away by the Helligen Kolumne had shaken a bit her fighting spirit. And she would not see utter victory like they obtained the day they liberated Directus before long.

"Gut. Start jetzt. (launching now)." The former Silber 1 indicated, and under the formidable pressure than run through the hydraulic system, the Berkut was launched with an astonishing speed. In only a few seconds she had gone from zero to a few hundred kilometers per hour. She could do nothing but felt the horrible sensation of being compressed, like she was weighting ten times her own weight or even more.

"Ich bin in der Luft (I'm airborne). Richtung, B7R (toward: B7R)." She informed the old pilot of her will to go to fight. Yet she did not know for who she would fight. Furthermore, Kellerman had not tried to steer her mind in any direction nor toward any cause, letting her be free of her fights. She was free to fight whoever she wanted. No one would hinder her this time. No one would deprive her of victory ever again.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 13:40, Weather: high stratus.**

Pixy and Crow 2 had quite a quiet way to B7R, despite them having to evade countless time Helligen Kolumne before they arrived at the border of the area. How many Osean, Yukte and Sapins were dying each time they took off without having a single chance to defend themselves, and with their sacrifices achieving nothing was a good question that would only see an answer if this war ever come to an end, and the answer would maybe reach the hundreds of thousands by that time. Memorials for the departed would be of colossal size if they wanted to write all of their names on these cold stones.

Like last time, their radar was almost jammed by the raw magnetic materials beneath the Round Table. Still, what they could see in their restricted area was utter chaos. Pixy had thought the defenders of the Round Table would put their pride above their disparities, but he was wrong for once. This place was like in peacetime, when mercenaries of all nations and Belkan officials clashed without any support, and without the Belkan officials supporting each other.

In the close proximity, an Osean squad of two-seaters F-14Ds was fighting against two squads of Typhoons which were fighting each other in the same time. Some had a grey and faint blue splinter camo while the others had a two-tone sandy camo. Which ones were fighting for the North or for this CSB? He had no idea, with his IFF showing only Belkans belonging to two ideals, but all of them were red ones, while the allied forces, mostly Oseans, were blue ones. He hadn't the time to think through this too much, to be honest. Pixy sighted, a bit tired to see the once brave defenders of the Round Table, its modern knights in duraluminium armor fighting each other like a band of rabid dogs.

"Let's dive into the action!" Crow 2 cheered, trying to compensate for his rather pessimistic mood. What had been positive in those last two weeks anyway? Maybe the announcement made about Ulysses was the only good thing that had come out of this conflict. His F-16C in which he had arrived at 5 kms dived toward the area of fighting between those three squads. His smaller F-16C, the sole survivor of Crow squad and one of the only survivors of the mission against Excalibur and the first Battle-Axe operation outside Pixy, was followed by the latter in their foolish dive toward the heated battlespace. But Pixy's reaction showed way less enthusiasm:

" Scheiße. jetzt geht das wieder los! (shit, here we go again)" Pixy swore, as the battlespace was already nothing but a complete mess.

As he dived, he went closer to them, and as such his radar could assess the data better. There was thirteen Typhoon in total, but he couldn't count how many were in each of their separate squads, and the Osean F-14Ds were only six by now. Luckily for them most of the Belkans were busy evading the fire of their former brother-in-arms, meaning that the Osean could survive a bit longer, and even act with a bit more of aggressivity than usual.

Immediately three Typhoons in splinter camo released a long-range missile volley. Pixy evaded them with ease, since radar tracking was very poor in this area. What were those ones thinking if they thought they could use such strategy here? Maybe those ones were the Northern ones, and as such they lack the habit of having to deal with the natural EMIs of this place, Galm 2 guessed. They did show some perseverance in their intention of shooting him down, since they attacked him head-on once their long-range attack failed. However, Pixy wasn't planning on dying against such planes as he survived quite easily his encounter with the Rot Squadron some months earlier, in this very place. As such, he attacked them head-on too, having to dodge their denser fire as he was getting closer. Using the rather large lock-on radius of his radar, he fired two missiles on the one at his left, before ripping the wing of the centered one with his gun, while releasing a QAAM locked on the last EF-2000.

"Gott Verdammt! I can't shake it!" The Belkan cursed, as the F-15C had turned very tight behind him, and in the same time the QAAM had made a U-turn too. The Nord Belkan pilot managed to outrun them for some seconds, but the interceptor-killer that the F-15C was, intended to reach speed making it able to caught even the mighty MiG-31 Foxhound- , and the RAMJET engine of the QAAM did not let him great possibilities of survival. Pierced by gunfire, he was unable to evade the missile. The burning Typhoon splintered into a million ablaze pieces before he even had a chance to bail out.

Pixy then went closer to the other allied fighters, seeking to relieve them of the weight of having to fight while being outnumbered. The Osean were not used to such odds, while this was a fundamental doctrine that they would learn back in the Belkan Air Force. You will always be outnumbered when fighting Oseans, they said. But their number was their weakness sometimes. Because when they would be isolated, alone and in a one-on-one fight, their illusion of power would be shattered and then the Belkans would not be surrounded by Osean pilots, but by fear and dead mens.

In the meantime, Crow 2 downed two other Typhoons: he charged them head-on, launching a pair of XMAA to disturb them and prevent them from launching head-on missiles at himself. Right after he crossed the two planes, making use of the light profile of his jet. By luck, an Osean F-14D was firing at them with SAAMs, and they were busy avoiding those long-range missiles that weren't disturbed by the magnetic interference. Indeed, the usual load for F-14Ds was XLAAs, but the Oseans realized the SAAMs had some advantage in the Round Table. As such, they didn't see the second pair of XMAA that the F-16C launched from quite close to be sure they wouldn't be submitted to this natural jamming.

"You like to go into the fire, Ustians." An Osean WSO commented, as he was waiting for his pilot to be in lock-on position at the two sandy camo Typhoons in their F-14D's one hour. Three seconds later a lock-on alarm blared, and a blue and grey Typhoon was trailing them, forcing the WSO to use the flares and chaffs to lose the missiles the Typhoon was firing at them. A Nord Belkan had almost defended a CSB craft, but it was only as he sought to kill an Osean one.

"We'd rather go into the fire than let it reach us." Pixy responded, as he engaged his afterburners, rushing to the rescue of the Osean F-14D, while another Osean F-14D was already engaging the two Typhoons the first Tomcat intended to attack. In less than ten seconds Pixy caught up with the Nord Belkan Typhoon, falling on it like an eagle on its prey. Still, the Typhoon had managed to land a few hits on the F-14D wing-root, resulting in a bit of asymmetric distortion of the geometric wing. On the other hand, the other Osean F-14D had managed to down one EF-2000 while the second one was dealt with some snapshots from Crow 2.

"Only five Belkan Typhoon left." The Osean commander, who was none but the pilot of the F-14D Pixy had just saved, announced with an old and stern voice.

"Make that four." A younger Osean voice spoke, reporting a kill he had obtained not easily at all, having to pursue the Belkan for some time and wasting three SAAMs the Belkan invaded by doing vertical yo-yo. And even after hitting it on the engines, the Typhoon which was spewing black smoke and flames managed to pull out some high-G maneuver and went below the Tomcat, landing some hits on the engine of the Osean aircraft as last retaliations. Luckily for the Osean, as the two engines of the F-14D were further away from each other than the Typhoon's, only one was hit when on the Belkan Typhoon the twin engines ignited the whole aircraft's structure a few seconds later.

" Nur zwei." Pixy killed two more sandy camo Typhoons head-on, firing a missile on each before extending his airbrake near breaking point, turning quite tight to get in the six of the two already damaged EF-2000s and finishing them with a pair of XMAAs.

Now there was only two Typhoons left, however those two were in different camos, which implied they weren't fighting for the same side. And as such, before any allied pilot could even land a gun hit on any of these two, the sandy one managed to kill the other head-on, saturating him with XLAAs. And then it went for the F-14D piloted by that young Osean voice, as Pixy recognized the sound of his voice when he heard him calling for help a few seconds later. Both aircraft were in his six right now, a bit below him. He knew what his leader would have done in such situations. He did the same.

"I'm coming to help. Just stay on a straight vector, Kind!" Galm 2 ordered, more serious than ever. This maneuver, he had never tried to use it before. He had only the memories of his flight leader enacting it. After all, she was the crazy woman piloting HIMAT, not him. So, he pulled a semi Split-S, keeping his plane inverted, and rushed to the F-14D.

"What are you do… ah!" The Osean pilot of the F-14D wasn't understanding at first what this Belkan merc was pulling out, then surprise and astonishment stricken him as the F-15C flew right above him, with the right rudder tips being only a few decimeters above his canopy. This Pixy guy had the time to made him a small hand gesture, but he only saw blurred things, while he forced himself not to act as his whole mind was screaming at him to move away from the incoming aircraft.

Then Pixy opened fire on the CSB craft which his pilot was maybe as surprised as the Osean pilot was. Of course, he had heard of this Galm 1 pilot flying X-29A who would pull out crazy stunts, but he did not know her subordinates would do such feet. Pixy launched a XMAA while inverting back his aircraft to evade the gunfire of his opponent, aiming right at the Typhoon. Flying at full speed, he overrun his own missile, crossed the EF-2000 craft's path and saw it exploding in his six.

"That was close, Thanks you Sir." The Osean pilot sighted, not, and not at all at a hundred percent not used to this kind of piloting. And he was maybe so surprised that this caused him to call Pixy "Sir". He could authorize himself a bit of relief, as the nearest Belkan squadron was only MiG-29s and was only eight aircraft strong. But would they be fighting each other's or not this time was not a certainty, when it had greatly helped them against those EF-2000, to be honest.

"Don't use that term. That's for officials, Kind." Pixy retorted, not wanting to be put in the same box that some of those proud and stuck-up officials. Sure, he possessed a sense of pride like any Belkan, but from his own action and not a degenerate form of patriotism.

"That's funny how he got your nickname without knowing it, Kid." The Osean commander allowed himself to express a bit of humor after witnessing such chaos.

"Stop calling me "Kid", Lieutenant Deagle!" The younger Osean pilot, identified as Bartlett, tried to response with a bit of authority but lacked strength in his voice to do so.

"Wacht mal Kind. Idealist sterben früher (watch out, kid, idealist die sooner)." Pixy warned him, as he was trying to process the few disparities that he had noticed on the CSB and Nord Belkan aircraft in matter of camo or insignia, while flying up close. He had noticed that the CSB weren't harboring the traditional Belkan insignia, a small Belkan cross with the color of Belka inside. Maybe they weren't wearing anything because they had not figure out some cool insignia to use other than the name of their new allegiance.

"Come on. The Round Table is nothing special, I can handle myself." Bartlett responded once more, which caused Pixy to sigh heavily, thinking they had another guy with the same mindset than PJ in the allied air force now. And unfortunately for him, if he died, he would bring a WSO down with him. Pixy hoped one of them could at least succeed in bailing out if needed.

And now the six Osean F-14D and the two Ustian aircraft were crossing the thin border between Belkan and Ustio, ready to engage those Fulcrums. On the allied side there was some F-15Cs and Yukte Su-27s closing by. However, behind the squad of Fulcrums Belkan F-15S/MTDs seemed to be coming. Only South Belkan had such prototypes since most of the prototype testing was made through Kupchenko's jurisdiction. The only thing Pixy wished right now was that those MiG-29s to be Nord Belkans, as such the F-15S/MTD would fire at them too, and that Kupchenko hadn't equipped the F-15S/MTD with ERAAMs. Or this "Kid" would definitively go down today.

 **Kreuzbergsee, Belka, 5/06/1995, 13:50, Weather: rainy, risk of thunder.**

With Excalibur firing at a consistent pace, it was only normal to have nearly thunderous weather above the lake named Kreuzbergsee, which was almost on top of a small mountain eroded by time. As she was progressing above this nice piece of landscape, she asked herself if there would be such lake in the caldera she had created at the top of the central peak of Mt Ivrea. At least it would be a more peaceful sight to see than the threatening anti-air command tower who stood there and that she destroyed almost a month ago.

Yet this darker daytime would help her have some cover, the dark cloud helping to mask her already very dark Su-47. To spot it one would need hawk eyes. Or maybe phase modulation radars to be a bit more realistic.

She had not been spotted until here, but the squadron of nine Belkan Su-37s with a black and white camo and silver radome would notice her without any doubt. Her onboard radar identified them as the Kaiserritter (Emperor Knight) team, which emblem was a silver shield featuring a dark double-headed Belkan imperial eagle. Kellerman had said Dinsmark was once the capital of the Belkan empire, and as such she could maybe deduced these ones were coming from the Aldernest Base of Dinsmark Pixy talked about. She was about to try to solve her ways, having prepared a small Belkan speech in her mind while flying alone, but their leader wasn't willing to let her talk her way through, apparently, as he inquired her with a rude voice:

"Woher kommst-du (Where do you come from)?"

"Aus den Ebenen von Schayne (From the Schayne Plains)." She answered with honesty, not wanting to blow her cover, and ready to use her small explanatory speech.

"Sie kommt aus Süden. Denn sie muss einem dieser Befürworter dieser verdammten CSB! Abschließen Sie!" (She come from the South. Then she must be one of those supporters of this damned CSB. Shoot her down.) Kaiserritter 1 ordered, as he set her as an enemy target for his and his team's IFF identifiers.

"Aber ..." Iskanda thought for half a second to try to restrain herself from the fight, then give up on that idea the next half of second. If they wanted a fight, they would have one. She had already downed Gelb leader. Those Terminators were going to meet their judgement day. They were engaging her head-on in a pyramid-like formation, with the leader on the front, two behind, then two pairs behind the three first in a staggered pattern and the last two further behind and outside of their formation. This was a very aggressive frontal charge. Their aggressivity was demonstrated by the volley of XLAAs they fired at her once the first one had a lock on her.

She could only evade the long-range volley by hitting the deck toward the lake. The missiles trailing her were lost in the trails her engines produced as she skimmed above the water, impacting each other, and allowing her to survive this violent first onslaught. But while she had done that, the nine planes had set themselves in a mauling circle, flying over her like vultures waiting for their prey to die and nourish on her remains. However, Iskanda was only willing to nourish vultures with their bodies and not hers, even if the fight would not leave that much remains on the ground.

So, she stood her ground and climbed back, thus avoiding the fire of two planes that had pitched downward to fire at her from above. The XLAAs they both fired crossed each other's path only a few hundred meters below her, as she was climbing vertically, hoping to use the excellent mobility the Berkut was supposed to possess. But the Su-37s possessed quite good vertical mobility too, and as such three of them had no trouble following her in her upward motion, while she had to avoid by close vertical barrel-roll the missiles the other members of this squadron that had set her as a target for no reason. Because she was fully unaware of Kupchenko's doing, or the doings of his followers these Belkan mongrels were accusing her of being one. And she had no clue what this acronym Kaiserritter leader used to designate this faction he thought she belonged to. The B in CSB might be for Belka, but why would Belkan fight each other right now. She must have missed some events during her time on the ground without any news of the outside besides the ones Kellerman brought. And in the meantime, since his fight above B7R many things could have happened.

Of course, she had not much time to think about all of this right now, as she was pursued and outnumbered. Odds were not in her favor, but since when did she care about odds? She never did. She hadn't backed down when she took back Directus, and against even greater odds. She quickly knew what she had to do with the three trailing her, and that would imply the use of the modification Kellerman advised her to do on this Berkut's armament. For the others, she had no idea. She had only one: she would survive. And she had already persuaded herself that Victory was achievable for her today by now. And that she would do everything in order to achieve her goal.

So, she fired the proximity-fuse high explosive rockets that they had managed to mount instead of the SAAMs, and in a backward firing angle. At this moment one Su-37 had managed to get closer than the others, and as such the fuse were activated by his craft above his two Belkan teammates, blowing only this lead aircraft. The good mobility of the other Su-37s trailing her allowed them not to suffer direct hits from the explosions nor the shockwaves, but the falling debris of their fallen comrades got sucked into their air intakes, resulting in the two of them losing their thrust and suddenly stalling in one of the worse position. More XLAAs came as retaliation for this shot, which she evaded by diving on the two vulnerable Su-37. She would not let them any chances to recover.

"Was passiert? (What's happened?)" One of the Belkan firing at her from afar asked, not understanding what had happened immediately.

"Sie benutzt einige explosive Bewaffnung (She used some explosive armament)." Another Kaiserritter commented, hoping this unidentified Su-47 they took for a CSB craft was not some prototype created by the Pendragon Projekt and that those explosions they just witnessed had not been caused by Hypersthene.

Yet it didn't require any Hypersthene for Iskanda's Berkut to shoot down the two falling aircraft, which she respectively ended with a bit of gunfire for the closest one, and the furthest one with a pair of missiles. Both airplanes were cut into pieces by the fire they suffered and the great mechanical stress this fall induced on them. Their remains plunged into the cold water of the Kreuzbergsee in a great geyser of steam.

Now she had only six to deal with. Three were in her one hour as she climbed back, and three were in her eight hours. It was not an optimal firing position for them, so she could maybe focus on the three almost facing her while the other would try to go in her sixes. These three seemed to be seeking confrontation and retribution too, since they did not try to go in any other way than head-on toward her. They fired their missiles, but she had already dived a bit to cross their path below them. As such they overflew her harmlessly, and even by pitching down their aircrafts they did not manage to land a single gun hit on her aircraft.

After bypassing this little joust that she had not the forward-facing firepower to handle correctly, she zoomed in, but not without firing another HEFR (High Explosive Fuse Rocket) on the one at the middle of the formation. Then she performed a small barrel-roll to set her rear window of fire on the left one. And fired again. She had no trouble pulling a small Himmelman to swoop down on her last prey of this three-plane group, killing him with gun shot fired vertically above the Terminator's canopy, piercing the body and surely the skull of this obstinate Belkan pilot. They might have been headstrong this time, but their head was certainly not strong enough to resist bullets.

It was by this moment that she noticed that the three others Su-37s had been taken down by long-range missiles. She had maybe failed to notice that right away due to the very bright light the explosive armament she just used to down three of those Terminators produced. Her radar identified her saviors as a squad of four Su-27 Flankers, with white body and black and grey splinter camo on their wings. Once more technological superiority had fallen to piloting skills, apparently. She would have like that the same happened above Tauberg.

"Netz 1 zu Unbekannten, alles' gut? (Netz one to the unknown, is everything alright?" The Belkan leading that squadron asked her as they came closer to her position, having rarely seen plane dueling with the Kaiserritter squad and coming out of it alive.

"Ye... Ja, alles' gut. Warum haben sie mir angegriffen?" (Yeah, everything's fine. Why did they attack me?) She asked back, not understanding why Belkan would break their unity when they could have a chance to stand tall against Osea.

"Sie mussten gedacht haben du war mit der CSB, weil du kommst aus Süden. So was machtest du hier, Fräulein? (They must have thought you were with the CSB since you were coming from the south. So, what were you doing here, milady?)" Netz 1 explained to this female pilot who seemed fully unaware of the new Belkan secession, which left him a bit puzzled to say the least. Anyone with access to a radio had. Yet himself did not know in which side he was with absolute certainty. He was only loyal to the Belkan people and not to its broken government.

"Ich war über Schayne abgeschlossen, aber ich erreichte, dieses Flugzeug von einem verstorbenen Piloten zu reparieren. (I was shot down above Schayne, but I managed to fix this craft of a fallen pilot) " She explained her discoveries in a somewhat subtle way, thus altering the truth for practicality. She couldn't say "I stole the former plane of Anton Kupchenko in the Mausoleum of his family" if she wanted not to appear suspect. After all, the man that Kupchenko was at this moment was dead by now and the man he had become had to be dead too: she knew no way of surviving cyanide.

"Interessante Geschichte (interesting story)." Netz 2 commented, finding astonishing that someone had managed to survive the Helligen Kolumne. He had lost some friends that day who managed to bail out but ended up being fried by the ionized gas. It had been the price to pay to down hundreds of allied planes and kill nearly one thousand airborne troops in the transport the Osean thought they had succeeded in providing security for.

"Nach welche Richtung warst du geflogen jedenfalls (Where were you heading to, anyways)?" Netz 1 intervened, curious about this unknown that seemed to speak Belkan fluently but without any tonal accent. Maybe this female pilot was of foreign origin.

"Nach B7R." Iskanda responded quickly, being not very used to long sentences with their complex subordinate clauses filled with rules and exceptions.

"Gut. Aber dein IFF Sender ist nicht up to date. Ich werde neue Daten durch PM Radio senden. (Good. But your IFF transmitter is not up to date, I'll send you some new data through PM radio)." Netz leader indicated, willing to have every man or woman he could get on his side, and not willing for this new pilot to have his life put at risk due to IFF issues.

"Ver. So ich schalte die PM Radio ein, und denn das ist gut (Roger. So, I switch the PM radio on and then it's good)?" Iskanda inquired the Belkan leader to help her understanding of this technology Kellerman could barely explain her, himself being not a tech-savvy.

"Ja. Ich brauche nur eine neue Name (Yes. I only need a new name)." Netz leader said, ready to connect his onboard computer to hers.

"Nennt mir "Schwarze Luchs" (Name me Dark Lynx)." She carefully chose her new nickname. She could have chosen something that had to do with wolves, but she was more of a small predator that like to use surprise than pack-hunting. Therefore, Luchs was better suited for her, or what she thought.

"Schöne Name. (nice name)" Netz 3 judged the bit of artistic sense there was behind that name. After all, this Su-47 possessed a Vantablack camo, making the "Schwarze" designation quite fitting.

Onboard her craft, Iskanda could see the PM radio working as the transfer of data was on. It was quite a complex transmission mean with strong encryption. She could see data needed for the deciphering change quite fast on her screen, such as frequency, amplitude and phase, with those values needed for PM radio transmission being apparently sent through encrypted AM or FM radio. Taken separately those numbers would have not meant something, especially with the unity of phase they were using, the radians, which was not a very concrete unit compared to degree. After fifteen second all had ended, and all the Netz squadron members could see her as a blue spot identified as "Schwarze Luchs".

"Gut. Schwarze Luchs, Netz Schaft, Heute gehen wir die Tafelrunde desinfizieren von alliiertem Abschaume (Good. SLuchs, Netz. Today we will cleanse the Round Table of the allied scum)!" Netz leader set their and thus her course for the oncoming battle. To change her allegiance wasn't affecting her all that much. As long as she could keep fighting and obtain victory, she was fine.

"Ver." She responded with full confidence, before climbing a bit with a high angle but not vertically, and then diving to the ground. She leveled only a few hundred meters above the ground, relieved of any stress she could have had due to the prior fight by this little flow of adrenaline she got through this little stunt. Using the acquired speed thanks to gravity, she went in supercruise with the four Flankers trailing her. Victory was waiting for her on the battlefield. And it was under its flag that she would obtain it today.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 14:10, Weather: high stratus.**

Downing these MiG-29s had not been too hard for the allied forces pilots, thanks to the support of a dozen Yukte Su-27s in a dark green two-tone camo. They had only suffered two losses: a Flanker and a F-14D. Luckily the Osean commander and the "Kid" had managed to stay alive. And apparently these F-15S/MTDs didn't possess ERAAMs, because they were now at less than ten kilometers away from the allied forces -so in estimated range for the ERAAMs, according to analysis of previous battles-, and the allied forces hadn't suffered massive losses by a volley of those devilish missiles almost impossible to counter due to their enormous range. Yet, Pixy know this wouldn't be easy. Even if some Osean F-15Cs and a squad of Yukte Su-33s would arrive almost at the same time than the Belkan Actives Eagle, the fight would be a long and tiring one.

Now he was counting twelve F-15S/MTDs that were closing on the battlespace. They would get into XLAAs range by the minute. And the radar was showing again new Belkan reinforcement, but only four Su-27s. The allied numbers were five F-14Ds, eleven Su-27s, eight Eagles and nine Sea Flanker. Yet having thirty-five fighters that provided them numerical superiority was nothing but an hindrance in this heated battlespace, due to fighters possessing different armament that could not be used at the same range, and as such, they would have to let holes in their formations to fire long-range missiles.

Pixy decided to hit the deck to avoid getting locked at long-range and was followed by the other Ustian and some Oseans. Then they slowly progressed above the edge of the mountains in the vicinity toward the Belkan forces, hoping to surprise them somehow. But most of the allied forces staid at medium level, waiting for the Belkan to be in range of their weaponry. They had chosen between short term glory and long-term survival, Pixy mused. And more than often people chose the first instead of the latter, despite the latter being the ultimate rule in battlefields.

One minute after he dived to evade the first exchange of fire that he knew would cause massive casualties on both sides, they effectively caused losses on both sides, with the skies filled with small explosions. but with higher numbers the allied forces could only suffer higher casualties than the Belkans.

"Why aren't they diving?" Pixy shouted in desperation, while volley of XLAAs, XMAAs and SAAMs were fired above his head.

"I guess they all wanted to get their one kill." Crow 2 sighted, now not very optimistic about the becoming of the battle, especially for the Oseans F-15Cs.

"Damn'it. Dive, Hurricane squad!" The Osean leader of the F-14D squad that had chosen to follow this merc for once ordered at his colleagues in F-15C, but it was too late. Where he had followed common sense and this merc that had survived most of his battles -he guessed it could only increase the survival of his squadron -, the Osean F-15Cs had chosen nonsensical way. As such, all F-15C were down. Only one Belkan Eagle was shot down on the other hand, when twelve Yukte fighters were shot down. Fifteen aircraft versus eleven seemed good odds still, but if only they manage to shoot all of them before those four Belkan Flankers arrived.

Of course, the Belkan pilots weren't planning on letting the allied forces bypass them, what Pixy intended to do. The F-15S/MTD squadron dived toward their formation after the first exchange of fire, thus avoiding the retaliation of the few allied survivors at high altitude, and at the same time Pixy's fighter group was climbing to engage them. Pixy attacked three Belkan craft head-on, downing one with a pair of missile on the left one while firing his gun on the right one, but he suffered a bit of gun fire from the craft at the center of their three plane formation, slightly behind the others. This caused his left afterburner to become inoperative. And he had to shut down both in order to keep yaw stability.

For a moment the Belkan pilot Pixy was beginning to trail thought he would outmaneuver the slightly slowed Eagle with his F-15S/MTD. He should have been able to, due to the canards of his fighter increasing its mobility. However, those canards and vectored nozzles were double-edged sword, their addition resulting in a loss of thrust. As such, if the F-15S/MTD was more mobile than Pixy's Eagle, he couldn't keep up with its stronger engines. Still, the Belkan pilot did manage to get in the six of his mercenary counterparts after enacting very sharp turns. The Belkan pilot tried to exploit this window of fire as his foe was accelerating. Pixy was soon out of gun range, and as the F-15C with two red wingtips had dived while fleeing, the XLAAs were no use. In the end, Pixy gained enough speed to utterly outrun his opponent, and pulled out an Himmelman toward him. The F-15S/MTD decided to shoot first, but this allowed Pixy to evade his missile by flying inverted and thus his trajectory went below his Belkan opponent's missiles. Pixy chose to fire a QAAM inverted, with the missile climbing straight on the active Eagle.

As he leveled a bit far from this heated and denied battlespace, he saw that many planes had been engaged in the same kind of joust he fought with this F-15S/MTD. Half of their F-14Ds were down now, along with some other Yukte Flankers that survived the dreadful exchange of fire. Those Belkans were evening the odds numerically speaking, but it would mean they would be in an advantageous position.

But from this point of view, he could see another thing happening: the F-14D of Kid had managed to land a hit on the nozzles of a F-15S/MTD but was unable to get the kill due to two other Belkans chasing him. "I'm not planning on letting Kindern die in battle." He asserted, before rushing once again in the heat of battle.

"Fly faster. They're gonna chew us apart!" The WSO of Kid shouted to his pilot, seeing on his screen that the cell of their aircraft wouldn't last that long. Even if they had not taken any missiles, the Belkan bullets were powerful enough to injure heavily their fighter, depriving it of its legendary mobility. Of course, its mobility was legendary in the seventies.

"I'm already at full afterburner. And if keep up that pace we will run out of fuel even if we survived this dogfight." Bartlett replied, trying to focus on something else than the lock-on alarms and the Belkan bullets grazing his Super Tomcat.

The two Belkan F-15S/MTDs had begun a rather slow scissoring maneuver, wanting to trap the already damaged F-14D in their crossfire. Bartlett had no other choice but to fly vertically, but with his engine having suffered damage the thrust was not enough to sustain his vertical flight for long. Still, it was enough to evade the crossfire. Ten seconds later the F-14D stalled and fell toward the ground. In their fall they received once more some Belkan bullets, with their aircraft rolling out of control making it harder to evade.

The Osean pilot managed to level, but only to find the two Belkans still trailing him, and about to begin another scissoring maneuver on him. If he stall-climbed once more, he would hit the deck. And trying to run would only mean that they would be in XLAA range, and he wouldn't even have the time to paint the bullseyes before the Belkans hit them. However, as a terrific quietness was reigning onboard the F-14D as he and his WSO had settled for their death, the unthinkable happened : the left one was hit by some bullets that cut his canards and ruined his turning motion, while the right attacker was downed by a missile on his cockpit. But neither Belkan had stopped their forward motion, and the two lose craft were still steered toward him. Then they heard a voice that forced them out of this train of pessimistic thoughts:

"Kind, Run. PC max!"

"Roger, we're getting out of here!" The Osean pilot responded to this unofficial order, still surprised but happy to have escaped death just mere seconds ago.

The two F-15S/MTDs locked into their scissoring maneuver impacted each other at the very place where the Osean F-14D stood five seconds ago. Pixy sighted, authorizing himself a bit of relief, having permitted one survival. Yet true survivors in this place had to earn it, not have it handed by procuration.

In the meantime, Crow 2 and the Osean F-14D leader had managed to have two shared kills, when attacking head-on two Belkan Actives Eagle. The F-14D staid a bit behind, having greater range than the smaller F-16C. And Crow 2's F-16C was agile enough to evade the missile and bullets the two F-15S/MTDs launched at him, before semi-inverting his aircraft and going between the two larger Belkan fighters. And while they were busy evading the SAAMs of the Osean leader, the F-16C caught them from behind, firing with accuracy his gun on their nozzles. And with their engines in bad shape, they weren't able to evade the XMAAs and SAAMs of the two respective allied aircrafts.

Pixy and the F-14D succeeded in terminating the F-15S/MTD this Osean pilot had hit before, with Pixy using his greater skilled at dogfight to make the Belkan pilots lose it speed dramatically. And a well-aimed SAAM sealed his fate. The three other F-15S/MTDs were dealt by the Yukte survivors, but at a great expand in weaponry and at the sacrifice of all remaining allied Su-27s. This left them with only eight allied crafts in the close vicinity. Still, a squad of fourteen Yukte MiG-29Ks, the carrier-compatible Fulcrum was incoming. They would have had substantial different load if they had been in an air-to-ground or air-to-see mission than the ground-based Fulcrum, but in such engagement their load was the same: SAAMs.

" Niemen squad incoming." One of their colleagues in his Sea Flanker informed, recognizing the fourteen aircraft squad, which was coming by the South-West. They were bearing a splinter two tone green camo, and their emblem was an eagle flying above the Niemen river. The four Belkan Flankers were coming from the North-West. Yet Pixy's radar spotted for a second a small anomaly.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 14:18, Weather: high stratus.**

On their way to the Round Table, Iskanda received some news about the geopolitical state of the world. She could have anticipated that a man like Kupchenko which possessed the world most powerful armament would pull some kind of coup d'état. Mens and women with enough will could obtain everything if they were ready to make sacrifices. And Kupchenko seemed pretty ready to let the Rald Partei-led North Belka die to achieve what he wanted.

But the other announcement, she couldn't have foreseen it in any way. Sure, she had indeed implied during her last talk that Excalibur could be used to weaponize Ulysses. However, she had never expected such a move from her adversary. This was a display of compassion for the world, aiming to gain support for the still unrecognized CSB. But who was she to try to understand this tactician? She couldn't right now. She was only brave enough to face him, and wise enough to agree that in the current state of things, she had no chance at pulling the Sword of the Kings out of the rock.

In the end, all of this only contributed to further increase her doubt in the success of her assassination attempt. Of course, he wasn't the only person leading this Pendragon Projekt, and as such others could have made this decision for him. Furthermore, it wasn't him who made this announcement but one of his subordinates. Yet, she had survived the fire of Excalibur. Then he could have survived a bit of cyanide if she survived a bit of plasma.

Netz 1 had not made an absolute certainty about who they would choose to fight. The allied forces were obvious targets. Since they were from Blumenberg, a city in the middle of the occidental Belka, they were Southerners. Though they weren't fully convinced secessionist, but they would not hesitate a single bit before engaging North Belkan if they showed hostility. However, if Nord Belkan loyalists only engaged the allied forces, they wouldn't stab them in their back.

They were now arriving on the Northwest sector of the area B7R, while the survivors of the allied strike force were in the center, a few hundred meters above the ravine in which she had defeated Kupchenko more than one month ago. This little victory seemed to be so far now. But those allied survivors would not be the only ones they would have to fight: there was 14 Yukte Sea Fulcrum and six North Belkan Black widows on her radar. Normally the later would not be on it due to their stealth, but apparently the Merlin satellites could track them somehow and sent their position to them through PM radio. These six planes were identified as being the Ofnir squad, which paintjob was a spotted two-tone grey camo and silver radome, with their emblem being a winged snake. Their squad number was the 605, for sixth Air Unit fifth Tactical Squadron.

"Angriff gegen den Alliierten erst. Dann werden wir sehen (Attack the allied first. Then we'll see) " Netz 1 ordered, as he was still unaware of the intentions of Ofnir squad. Even if he knew they were young pilots fed with the glory promised by the Rald Partei's propaganda.

"Gut. Aber ich werde nicht euch erwachten. (Good. But I won't wait for you to engage them) " Iskanda replied, before hitting the deck at full speed. She hoped as she was leveling a few hundred meters above the ground that her plane's stealth would allow her to shoot first at those MiG-29Ks.

"Wir kommen gleich nach (we'll be right behind you) " Netz 2 nodded, accepting to be the bait, since their Su-27s were no stealth planes.

And five minutes later, while the allied forces were clashing with the Ofnir squad, who were managing to stay alive due to the amazing mobility of the YF-23s and the weak number of allied survivors by that time, the Netz squad was in range to fire their SAAMs at the Yukte Sea Fulcrum. They bypassed the denied battlespace at the center of the area, leaving these North Belkan to their fate.

Four Yukte fighters were down by the volley, thus further focusing them on the four Su-27 firing at them. And as such, none of them saw the Berkut when it flew toward their Fulcrums from below. Indeed, Iskanda had arrived right under them with no issue. Sure, the instability of the Berkut could throw her off guard sometimes, especially at low altitude. But being used to cope with such issues on her X-29A, she was able to tackle this challenge.

She had zoomed in right below two of them, a bit in front of their trajectory. As her informal wingmen were keeping them busy with their SAAMs they had a bit of trouble evading, those two did not even see her coming right at them. "Kolossale Fehler meine lieber Kameraden (Big mistake my dear comrades) " she mused, feeling no guilt as she was about to turn against her former allies. She sprayed gunfire on the engine inlet of the first one and fired two missiles on the right one. Flying recklessly, she went between the two burning planes, keeping her plane steered upward.

"Gut Abschloss. (Good kill)" Netz 1 commented, as the Berkut was pulling out a loop toward two other MiG-29Ks, which had lost quite a lot of energy evading SAAMs fired with accuracy by the Netz squad. Falling on them like a bird of prey, she fired her gun on one, killing the pilot and turning the cockpit to a bunch of blooded glass, and exploding the cockpit of the second one with a single missile. Now she had four allied kills under her belt. And to be honest, she was not planning on keeping her killcount this low.

"Kill this Berkut!" Niemen 3 shouted, as he was now the leading officer of the squad, with the two last dead having been Niemen 1 and 2.

"Versuch einmal, Kamerad! (Try again, comrade) " She retorted, as she fired a HEFR toward the two aircraft trailing her. This time they had a bit more of energy than the last ones she shot down, and they were able to evade the direct blast. However, by the time they went out of their surprise, she had already enacted a Split-S and was heading right on them head-on gun blazing. At some point she would have wanted to pull out her head-to-tail maneuver, but she held herself back from doing so, afraid one Belkan or allied pilot would recognize her. Even if she was pretty sure a Berkut had a structural strength high enough to bear such g-forces.

One was set ablaze as she managed to land a hit inside his air intake, as the fuel injectors were destroyed by the gun burst. The other tried to put his nose down to fire at her, but she evaded a first gun burst by inverting her plane. The next second she was retaliating, and a pair of missiles rushed from her bays to impact the enemy Fulcrum.

"I will take that Belkan myself!" The Yukte de-facto leader growled at her, wanting to take this black plane that had already shot down six of his comrades.

"Ich erwachte dir, Kamerad (I'm waiting for you, comrade.) " She taunted him, still speaking in Belkan even if most Belkan would not use their mother tongue in the sky. After all, few allied pilots could understand it, with most of this little group being Belkan renegades or mercs.

The two planes rushed toward each other. Both manage to evade each other's missiles by banking hard. This caused the Su-47 to vibrate greatly when it almost stalled, but she recovered by pitching up before diving, this further increasing the stall. The speed she gained through gravity allow her to outturn her opponent, and she was in his six in no time. He managed to evade her gunfire for a while, escaping her grasp for some time.

In the end, there was no use at trying to outperform such a piece of Belkan engineering. He had pulled streaks of fast turns, but no carrier-compatible plane, that had obviously a stronger structure and as such greater inertia could best this Su-47. And to Iskanda's surprise, he began making greater turns, losing speed dramatically. "What are you trying to do, mein lieber Kamerad?" she analyzed this sudden loss of speed to find out what he was preparing to pull out. She had a good hypothesis, and ready herself in consequences, but she wasn't sure about her assumption.

In an interesting turn of event, what he pulled out was exactly what she had foreseen: a Cobra. She hit the deck when she saw his aircraft passing above her, getting herself in a good rear-firing position. And deprived of his speed by this Cobra, the Yukte pilot was unable to evade the rocket coming right at him from below, fired from this Berkut he hoped to lock but ended up being no more than a defenseless prey.

As his aircraft burned, the last thing he looked at was his four wingmates. Two of them were shot down simultaneously, outnumbered two to one by the Netz squad that would use a simple tactics : send two aircraft after an enemy, let one aircraft overrun him, only for the second to pursue him and make him bleed his speed through evasive maneuvers. Then the first would do a U-turn and fire a SAAM at the enemy from afar, which he wouldn't be able to evade due to the speed loss.

The two other surviving MiG-29Ks attempted to rush toward the main allied fighter group, but it was in vain. They had thought this Su-47 had no SAAMs and thus wasn't a threat at long range. They would have been right in their hypothesis if it was not Iskanda flying it. Furthermore, this plane -Kupchenko former plane to be precise- seemed to be equipped with stronger engines than usual, giving it more speed at the extent of its stability. Skimming above the small dry valleys that were puncturing this place, the Berkut was catching up with them, despite suffering from great roll instability, oscillating on his axis a bit.

They quickly realized this fact, and they turned back to face her, and dived at her from above. However, she wasn't planning on letting them dive peacefully. She zoomed in, feeling the sudden G-forces as she accelerated toward the shattered skies. SAAMs were fired toward her, but she evaded them by barrel-rolling vertically, a figure she would have sometimes a hard time pulling out with her X-29A but was way easier with vectored thrust. Yet she didn't climb fully vertical, curving her path to made sure her sight would be set on their back soon. As such, when they should have crossed, they didn't, and she had no gunfire from above to evade. The Sea Fulcrum pilots were not so lucky, as her curved climb align her right on the engines of the first. They both exploded and he fell toward the ground and to his death.

The second one leveled with the energy of despair, willing to evade this crazy Belkan female pilot, from what he could say by hearing her incomprehensive speech at the radio. But he hadn't flown for more than thirty seconds before a pair of SAAMs was launched from his two hours. He rolled and dived to escape the semi-active missiles, but as Netz 2 was quite far from this fleeing fighter, he could correct the trajectory with ease. The two missiles impacted him as he was engaged in a scissoring maneuver, with the Black Berkut hitting him during a hard turn. His structural integrity was compromised due to the sharp turn he was enacting when hit, and as such, his fighter shattered in a thousand pieces when it blew up above the ground.

After having shot down those Yuktes, the small group of Belkan-made fighters, led by Schwarze Luchs head to the main battlespace : there the Ofnir squad had only suffered one loss by Pixy, when their action had diminished the number of allied fighters even more, leaving only three F-14Ds, four Su-33, one F-16C and one F-15C against those North Belkans.

One Su-33 that had gone a bit far from the battlefield to use his XMAAs was her first victim. As he was firing, he did not saw the Berkut that had flown below him before its pilot pulled out an Himmelman. She didn't level her fighter afterwards but climbed in his forward blind spot, where her stealth could hide her craft. A well-aimed gun burst was enough to down the Sea Flanker.

This caused some allied fighters to look back at their flank, as well as the YF-23s. Their numbers were almost even by now. If only we were united, Netz 1 mused. If they had, now they would be outnumbering the allied forces that had not received any reinforcement in the last minutes. Victory seemed to be reachable for him if nothing changed. A few seconds later, he secured this thought and two kills by shooting two SAAMs at a YF-23 and F-14D that were doing scissoring maneuvers, evading each other's fire with equivalent results, but were unable to evade this long-range fire.

Another Su-33 that had just damaged an YF-23 chose to engage the Su-47 that was evading all incoming fire with chill-spinning ease. He knew he had to try his best to stop this one, or at least disturb her enough. Falling on the pitch-black plane as the Berkut was chasing the F-14D of Deagle, he obtained a lock for his XMAAs and fired two of them, wanting to obliterate this damned Belkan girl that had killed on her own half of their reinforcement.

"Versuch einmal, Kamerad." The Belkan his IFF identified as "Schwarze Luchs" laughed at him as she dived hard toward an altitude were the natural EMIs of this place were stronger enough to nullify his shot.

"I'm on the leader." The Yukte asserted as he followed the dark plane in its nearly vertical dive. He expected this one to try to level at some point to fire at her, but she kept diving.

Then she sealed his fate. He had heard of the rear-firing capacities of some Belkan Sukhois, but he thought these were for ace squadron only, and most of those great ace squad were widely known outside of Belka. As such, that this fighter shot some rocket through its SAAMs bay shook him off. But it did not shake his mind as strongly as his fighter was. The High Explosive Fuse Rocket sent shrapnels in his wings, engines and radome.

Again, he expected her to let him fall, as he was lunging his hand toward the bail-out handle. But as he was startled by the bright explosion, she had chosen to pull out a head-to-tail maneuver. She knew they were the only two in the close proximity. The entire plane vibrated in mid-air as she had suddenly inverted her thrust and trajectory, with her thrust fighting over gravity for some seconds. As such, the Yukte only saw an aircraft almost hovering by itself, on which he was still falling. Taken over by fear, he stretched his hand to catch the handle, but at this very moment this Schwarze Luchs pilot fired his gun and two missiles, blowing his aircraft in a thousand pieces. Not wanting to suck any metallic parts into her engine she evaded by pitching hard, making her plane fall on its back. This was definitely not a thing she would repeat too much, especially after pulling out a head-to-tail maneuver. Then she inverted her plane and climb back toward the furball.

Yet there, things weren't happening as good as they did to her. Netz 4 had been shot down by a QAAM from Ofnir 3 after he had to evade a SAAM from the very F-14D she was chasing before this Su-33 decided to disturb her. She hated when she was losing allies. She felt nothing but hatred toward this Osean as she rushed toward his craft at full speed.

She ended up arriving on its eight hours, yet far too fast to have a proper lock on it, let alone land a good hit with her gun. So, she overrun him, and then fired an HEFR on his side. Acting purely by reflex, and above all because he was not used to deal with such kind of armament, the F-14D's WSO released a bunch of flares. However, these were meant to be used to disturb IR missile locks, not magnetic proximity fuse. Henceforth the HEFR exploded in very close proximity, damaging greatly the F-14D engine due to the shockwave.

"Reboot the turbine Jim!" The captain Deagle shouted, quite worried about his fate. The swing-wing fighter had its wing stuck in a closed position, diminishing the lift it would create by gliding.

"I'm trying. But the inlet had been badly damaged. And I bet the combustion chamber is not pristine either." The WSO replied, as more and more red lines were drawn where only green were before this attack.

"Try again!" The Osean bellowed, as he was seeing the Berkut executing a horizontal loop toward them.

The WSO overwrite some security mechanisms, hoping this would reboot the turbine. For a few seconds, it was successfully rebooted, with the turbine counter going back to normal figures. For a few seconds, they fought they were safe from this "Schwarze Luchs" Belkan Berkut. Then their luck ran out, and even more red dots appeared on their HUDs and sensors.

And five seconds later, before this Berkut could even land a single bullet on them, the F-14D engine blew up from the inside, reducing the fighters to a mist of metallic powder.

"Deagle! What's happened?" Kid screamed, not understanding how his leader's plane had blown up before the Berkut finished it.

" Reaktorüberdruck. Engine overpressure. It can happen more often than you realize, Kid. I have seen plane land safely to refuel mid-battle and then explode as they took off due to that." Pixy explained to the astonished Osean, as he was chasing the YF-23 an allied Yukte had already damaged. A good reason why this technical incident had happened was maintenance issues caused by the lack of spare parts due to the EMP disaster.

"That's... unbelievable how it happened so quickly." Bartlett stuttered, but then a lock-on alarm definitively focused his mind on another thing than his leader's demise. Netz 3 had lock on to him.

As the already damaged Super Tomcat was evading the fire of the Belkan Flanker, Pixy went closer to the YF-23. He managed to strafe the cockpit as the Belkan pilot had just escape a previous gun burst by curving his path a bit when the Belkan climb back to his altitude. He was about to finish him with a missile when this Schwarze Luchs strafed the Nord Belkan head-on, stealing the kill of Pixy. He then saw two missiles leaving the Berkut's bays and thought his time was over. However, the two missiles only grazed him and overrun him to down an YF-23 that had managed to sneak behind him. Pixy was a bit startled by this act, but since Kupchenko had seceded to protect the world from Ulysses, he could expect that kind of compassionate act from CSB fighter pilots.

"If only you knew" Iskanda whispered in her thoughts, as she had recognized her wingmen, which had apparently painted both wings in red. And red was sticking out pretty well in the sky. Even in skies filled with blood, iron and fire like this one.

"I'm on him. Run, Kid." Crow 2 announced after he managed to evade a SAAM from Netz 2, using its smaller size to fool the missile tracking pod. The next second he gunned the left engine of the Belkan Flanker.

"Ich komme an, Netz 3! (I'm coming) " Schwarze Luchs said, as she was next to the now fleeing last Osean F-14D. She could have shot him right away, but she had someone to help first. She only flew by him, maybe startling him a bit, but only to climb at full speed.

"Schnell, Schwarze Luchs!" Netz 3 said, as he just evaded another gun burst aimed for his other engine.

Iskanda's Berkut enacted an oblique loop toward the allied F-16C. She was about to aim for the cockpit when she recognized his squad insignia on his tail. It was an Ustian survivor of operation Jugement. Yawing to the right a bit, she set her gun for its engine. Unfortunately for Netz 3, in the split second of hesitation from Schwarze Luchs, Crow 2 managed to destroy his second engine and rear radome before bailing out. Netz 3 had no choice but to bail-out too. At least, with this result, Iskanda was not feeling guilty toward Ustio nor the Netz squad, since both had survived.

The Osean Netz 3 was aiming at was now fleeing, leaving behind him a black trail. She saw no glory in taking down this already damaged Tomcat. Still, there was still 2 members of the Ofnir squad in the air.

One of them was downed by the combined efforts of Netz 1 and 2, which re-enacted the strategy they used against the Sea Fulcrums a bit sooner. It costed them three SAAMs in total, but it was worth it. Three missiles and a bit of gunfire was a good exchange for the death of a Rald Partei follower.

The last one, who was their leader Ofnir 1, which had only obtained his rank through politics and not through skills, something that many Belkan despised, was now pursued by Schwarze Luchs. Bit by bit, she caught up with him after one or two whirring sessions in which her plane with better mobility was doing wonders. After bleeding its speed, she was ready to make its pilot bleed too. So, she pitched high, climbing a bit above the North Belkan craft before inverting her plane and diving gun blazing on its cockpit. Very painful screams were heard on the radio as she flew by him, avoiding the lose YF-23 by a small barrel-roll to the left.

She was intending on letting the Belkan bleed to death, but apparently Pixy wanted to steal her kill back. The F-15C terminated the Black Widow by a single XMAA. This time too he had flown quite close to this Schwarze Luchs Belkan ace. He couldn't spot any marking on its Vantablack camo and had not had the chance to be close enough to see her face -he could tell it was a female pilot from the tone she was using-. It was a very neutral tone by the way.

He only spotted a low visibility emblem, almost invisible to the naked eye. Some emblem made of arrows and an inverted eight. No, Pixy thought, not an inverted eight, but an infinite. He had seen some infinite symbols during his flight with old Belkan squad when he was still an official. But he was absolute certain of something: he had never heard of someone with the name Schwarze Luchs. Who was this female Belkan pilot was a mystery to him.

He was about to try to get closer to this plane when a squadron of MiG-21s arrived from the Belkan side of the Round Table. In the same time, a great grey spot appeared on his radar, coming from the Ustian side of B7R. It wasn't a Helligen Kolumne, it was moving too fast for it. Or if it was one, it would mean the Helligen Kolumne could reach subsonic speed, which would be bad news for sure. Her IFF identifier tagged them as the Shadow Swarm team of Osea, made of five EA-18Gs and ten F/A-18Cs. This group was rarely used in combat. Most of their mission had been the recovery of fleeing Belkan asset at the beginning of the war. Yet at the beginning of this war Osea had six squads like this one. But the Belkan squadron that was trailing the Fishbeds close could provide an easy explanation for these losses.

"This is allied GHQ for all allied planes. The lead plane of this MiG-21 Belkan group seems to be a deserter. He might have useful data. Force him to follow you and cover its retreat." An Osean officer ordered over the radio, which caused the Shadow Swarm to split its forces in two to let these Belkan fugitives go through.

"Schwarze 1 to all planes. Let's show to these Osean den Macht der treue Dunkelheit (the power of true darkness)." Dominic Zubov aka "The Vulture" ordered to his squad of MiG-31s, which paintjob was a dark one with a red line behind the cockpit, and small red triangle near their wingtips, wing-root, intakes and elevators, like if those part had been blood stained by the blood his squadron had made flow. The emblem of the thirteenth night air division sixth Tactical fighter squadron was a blood red vulture atop a slightly paler red skull. From the red skull a yellow snake was trying to go upward, only to go directly in the mouth of a greater grey snake that was doing a full circle from the Vulture's head, surrounding the yellow snake. This was only further deepening was the sight of this squad meant: traitor to Belka, your foolish attempt of escape is over. Or to make things short: Be ready to face Death!

"We couldn't have worse reinforcement." Netz 1 went ironic, not knowing if the Schwarze squad would rule them as fugitives since they were fighting for the South.

Pixy had chosen to help the damaged Tomcat retreat toward the Ustian side of the Round Table. He was not willing to fight The Vulture. He had read intel that his squad butchered forty Belkan cadets that tried to flee at the very beginning of the war, with no survivors. The Schwarzeschaft had destroyed two Shadow Swarm team that day.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 14:30, Weather: high stratus.**

Right now, Pixy was escorting the MiG-21s, with their leader tagged as "Huckebein". He had already met this pilot one or two time during his time as an official. An average bad was what he was to his mind.

As he looked back toward him, he almost felt sorry for these Oseans. They would be sacrificed for nothing that would really matter. He knew this Belkan pilot wasn't in the Pendragon Projekt nor a high-ranking official. He wouldn't be that useful to the allied forces. And to be honest, Pixy wasn't even sure the Shadow Swarm team would delay the Vulture long enough to allow this fugitive to live.

He had seen some other radar anomalies that were coming from the east, and therefore he began to steer his plane eastward. They were similar to the signature of Berkuts. Did some goddess of war allow him to have his vengeance at last?

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 14:35, Weather: high stratus.**

For a moment the few Belkan Southerners feared the Schwarze squad would engage them. And all but Iskanda feared this squad enough to doubt in their ability to survive a fight against the Vulture. They had a common enemy for now, then they would see. After all, Zubov was not from Belka himself, and was not involved in Belkan politics for all that Netz leader knew.

On the other hand, the Osean Shadow Swarm was not willing to turn away from this fight. Even if it was a lost one from the beginning.

"Schwarze 1 to all units. Downing these fugitives is the number one priority. Zerstört diese Osean Abschaum Jetzt (Destroy this Osean vermin now)!" The Vulture ordered, and all closed the distance between them and the Osean Forces.

"Können wir auch angreifen oder nicht? (Can we attack too or not)" Schwarze Luchs asked, not knowing if they had the right to interfere with a black ops squadron. Her training in Farbanti never spoke about such units. She didn't know if Erusea had such in the first place. Maybe they do too.

"Du kannst. Aber kein Hindernis, verstanden? (You can. But no hindrance, understood?)" The Vulture responded after some seconds of hesitation, yet without any in his voice.

After all, The Vulture's job was solely to take out these fugitives, not to go on the hunt for secessionists. He hadn't planned to engage CSB supporters, but he would if they hindered this chase too much. Their support could always be appreciated if more Osean showed up. To be fully honest those geopolitical games were not something he liked to be part of. The last time he had involved his squadron and himself in politics, it was above the skies of Romney. And what happened in these skies was far worse than anything the Belkan government had made him do so far.

The first volley of SAAMs from the two Su-27s and the eight MiG-31s decimated the Osean Shadow Swarm, as they weren't affected by the jamming of the EA-18Gs. Still, their radar jamming was strong enough to hide the precise location of the fleeing MiG-21s. The Growler and Hornets tried to retaliate, but their only result was a minor hit on Schwarze 2's left wing.

Iskanda had to come way closer than the other craft, not being equipped with long range armament. SAAMs flew by her as she arrived in range of the F/A-18Cs. She gunned one head-on, then barrel-rolled to the left to evade a XMAA launched by a Growler. She curved her path to attack another Hornet from its one hours. In the meantime, many of the Belkan SAAMs had found their mark, while she rushed toward an untouched EA-18G. The very Growler that had fired at her mere seconds ago.

"Fire! Fire at this Berk..." The WSO shouted at his pilot who was tasked to fire the gun of the electronic warfare hornet variant. But their radio was shut off as the said Berkut open fire on the Osean craft. The pilot was deadly injured, but managed to tense his hand on the trigger, resulting in his aircraft opening fire despite his current state. Flying line astern, the Berkut was out of the firing arc of the now almost-dead Growler. She rolled a bit her aircraft to the right and her left wing flew over the Osean plane's right wing. Moving her craft a bit around her yaw axis, she got them in her sight and terminated the jammer aircraft with a rocket.

A second volley had now been launched from the ten Belkan crafts against them, but from their side this time, as the Belkan had chosen to disperse when the Osean missiles grazed them.

The new positioning of the Schwarze squad ensured that this time the Oseans had even fewer chances to retaliate. And the only two survivors were shot from behind by Iskanda that had pulled an Himmelman after shooting these three allied planes. She fired her gun at an EA-18G that had already been hit by a SAAMs head-on, and as such was not able to lose her. Her second kill was a simple Hornet, which had chosen to dive to evade the incoming fire. But she had dived on him with full afterburners, gaining speed very quickly. He did try to lose her by leveling suddenly in the hope that she would have too much G to bear if she leveled at nearly Mach 1. However, she just leveled below him before pitching high and pulling the trigger.

"Gut. Osean abgeschlossen. Huckebein, du bist dran! (Good. Osean shot down. Huckebein, it's your turn)" Schwarze 1 commented the quick clashing they had with minimal losses. All Oseans had been shot down, and due to the great number of missiles they had released, there was few to no chances of having any survivors, with their missiles being set to lock onto chutes when the craft they were targeting was shot down by a fellow pilot. This was a direct violation of the international rules of war, but their Dunkle Ops squadron was almost permitted anything to succeed, including firing at chutes.

But in the Southern part of the Round Table, thing had already started to go south before the red and black MiG-31s had begun to spread chaos there. If Bartlett felt quite unlucky as he saw Su-47 closing on them, Pixy only considered himself to be the luckiest man ever, in total opposition. Of course, two of the five MiG-21s were immediately shot down, but Pixy was able to down two Berkut by attacking them on broadside, with the powerful gun of the Eagle tearing to shreds their fragile forward-swept wings. And of course, it was pretty much impossible for these pilots to keep their plane stable without a wing.

The two of them immediately bailed out to relative safety. The relativity of their safety was further increased as Pixy pulled out an Himmelman to reach their chutes he mercilessly gunned. He could see them either burning as their chute was set ablaze for one or dying from massive bleeding as his rounds sliced the North Belkan in half. He was encroaching on international rights here, but the feeling of accomplishment he was getting from this vengeance was much more precious than some lines written on some papers.

"What are you doing, Galm 2 ?!" Bartlett almost shouted at his allied, disgusted to see such cruelty.

"Enacting my vengeance. You will suffer as much as I suffered, Ashley Bernitz!" Pixy retorted with all the hatred and violence he could put in his voice.

"Abschloss dieser Söldner (Shot down this mercenary)!" Ashley responded, and six Grabacr squad members turned away from the three surviving MiG-21s and F-14D to engage Pixy. They were flying in a two-line formation, with four on the first line and two on the second.

"Ich werde diese Vergeltung genießen! (I will enjoy this vengeance)" Pixy claimed as he fearlessly attacked the six planes head-on.

He fired two XMAAs on the two further away to disturb them, then fired a QAAM on the ones at the sides of the first line. The two last were down by a long gun burst and a pair of missiles, respectively. By this time the two further away had managed to shake off the missiles he fired at them and reach the first line, but Pixy was already zooming in and thus was out of the firing arc of their SAAMs. In reaction, they pitched upward to try to aim at the F-15C.

However, Pixy had read their ill-intended strategy, and had dived on the four chutes below him, ending the four pilots' life in a short strafing run, gaining both satisfaction for him and the ire of the Osean pilot:

"Stop doing that! There are rules in war for god's sake!" Bartlett shouted, now feeling ashamed to owe this mercenary his life.

"Klappe zu, Osean (Shut up)! The only sake that I care for is my own. Not any god's and not yours. You have no moral high ground over me, so stop whining wie ein kleine Mädchen (like a little girl)!" Pixy threw a tantrum at the Osean, who seemed to be just a kid walking out of his flight school without any experience of large-scale battlefields and above all any idea of what vengeance was or meant. Now the two other Su-47s he had let go for a moment were targeting him once more. Putting the pedal to the metal he lost them and their SAAMs in an instant as he reached Mach 1 and went over Mach 2.

"He's too fast." Grabacr 9 complained, as even with full afterburners they weren't even close to catch a F-15C any day. And the SAAMs unlike the more modern ERAAMs had no great supersonic capacities. Hopefully for Pixy the ERAAM was apparently a product of the Pendragon Projekt, since he hadn't seen any North Belkan craft carrying this kind of missile today.

This gave Pixy plenty of time to extend his airbrake, made a U-turn, and attack the Berkut at full speed. He fired a pair of XMAA to prevent them to lock on to him, hoping they would disturb their SAAMs tracking pod. However, given his supersonic speed in his approach, these missiles hit the Berkuts after he shot two short gun bursts that hit both planes hard enough to weaken their mobility. Thus, the pair of XMAAs destroyed the two Su-47 long after he had overrun them.

The other Grabacr squad members hadn't lost much time chasing the fugitives. Now only Huckebein and Bartlett were alive, but not for long: both planes were fuming and riddled with holes. Both knew that even if they made out of this fight alive, their plane wouldn't be able to the Directus Airport due to fuel leaks. Furthermore, the airport itself was out of commission since Excalibur stroke weeks ago, somehow activating explosives secretly planted below the runway by the Belkans, that they didn't manage to use the day of Directus' Liberation.

Obviously, four Su-47 were more than a match against two future wreckages. But against an infuriated proud Belkan merc, they were less confident. Ashley and another kept attacking the fugitives, while the last two other Grabacr members were supposed to down Pixy.

But to be honest, the hunters become the preys quite fast, with Pixy damaging the inlet one of them head-on, and pursuing him hot on his tail. The other one, spooked by this pilot that had effortlessly and mercilessly slaughtered every members of his squad, chose to flee. He had forgotten there was one thing all Belkan pilot knew they couldn't do in the presence of Schwarze squad. Crossing their path in the same vector was allowed. Trying to go the other way around meant choosing death sentence. And no one had safeguards, would they be the son of Belkan five-star admirals or simple pilots.

"Schwarze 3, Fox 1" Was how this was reminded to the fleeing Grabacr pilot, who took two SAAMs head-on.

"Flucht ist Tod. Erinnere das, Piloten." Zubov commented, as the Su-47 was now nothing more than burning debris set on a collision course with the ground.

In the meantime, Pixy had closed the distance between him and he Grabacr plane. But another plane had closed this very distance too: Schwarze Luchs. And as such, it was not two missiles that hit him after Pixy managed to strafe his cockpit, hearing the complaint born of the pain of the grievous wounds he inflicted. No, his plane was reduced to smithereens by four of them. Of course, for both of them Pixy had no need to look for chute since the pilots were obliterated inside their fighters.

A few seconds later, Schwarze 1 arrived in range for his SAAMs. He only locked on to the last MiG-21, the fate of the last Osean F-14D was not his choice to make. He was doomed like all of his countrymen, but they had not assimilated this fact yet.

 **Area B7R, Belka, 5/06/1995, 14:40, Weather: high stratus.**

Now his fate was indeed crystal clear for the young Osean pilot: he was going to die. A silence of death was filling the canopy once more. He just witnessed how merciless Belkans could be, whether they were officials or mercs. He saw them killing their runners without even considering they were human beings anymore. And that Pixy guy who was currently battling with Grabacr 1 and 2 didn't care for him a single bit.

However, as all seemed to be leading toward a full Belkan victory, something or to be more precise, someone was about to steer the tide of the battlefield in his own way. Four Su-47 with white and gold lines on their wingtips and ruddertips, three-tone splinter grey camo and black radome had entered B7R, and head toward the denied battlespace. Still, they weren't the only planes entering the round table: there was also some spots coming from the Northwest, and other from the Southwest. But these four would have the greater impact on the fate of this battle.

"Hallo, Zubov." A Yukte-sounding voice said. A Yukte-sounding voice one pilot thought she had silenced forever, but apparently failed in doing so. Or maybe it was just electronic voice modifier, she mused as she tried to calm herself.

"This is Dinsmark to Schwarze. Svafnir squad incoming. Assist them. Kill the secessionist. This is..." A Belkan officer transmitted to the black ops squadron, as in the same time North Belkan planes were sent on Excalibur. However, the voice was cut due to some jamming, and on one panel of Gault 1 craft, there was a green line with the words "Satellite 3: Jamming aktiviert".

"You know very well how they will treat you whatever the way this war ends. They will charge you with all their crimes and reveal what you have done on your former government's behalf." Gault 1 recalled how and why Zubov had been transferred from Yuktobania to Belka.

"Es stimmt (it's true). Wir sind störende Zeugen geworden (We have become embarrassing witnesses)." Schwarze 3 intervened, knowing too well the horrors Gault 1 was speaking of since he was part of the ones that committed them.

"Aber ich kann neue Chance geben. Eine Amnestie gewähren. Und mit der Zeit können wir alle Erlösung erreichen. (But I can give you new Chances, grant you an amnesty. And in time we can all reach redemption)." Gault 1 proposed with a calm voice, whispering right into the shattered heart and souls of the members of Schwarze squad.

"Es klingt vielversprechend, doch? (It sounds promising, right?)." Gault 4 added. Pixy recognized the voice of Andrew Barry that had intervened at the Assembly of Nations.

"Eigentlich klingt es. (Indeed, it does)" Schwarze 1 confirmed. Right now, he was thinking heavily about this, and what this could allow his squadron to become. In the eye of many Belkans and allied pilots they were indeed considered to be the incarnated fear, but only due to the atrocious acts they had enacted on Yuktobania's behalf few years ago during the Romnyan conflict. If a cam could have taken a picture of him, it would have looked like some statue of perplexity, with a stern face and holding his chin within his right hand.

Few mens had the chance to start anew from their past mistakes, he knew that. Very few mens had the chance to win wars. Was he part of these two kinds of men, he did not know. But he knew there was a third kind of men: the ones that turned the tide of wars. Sometimes it took more courage to change a war than to win it. In the end, what he had to do was to decide what he wanted.

From then he understood that he had a chance to be into this third kind of men. And he pronounced these words with a slightly troubled voice:

"Was müssen wir machen, um dich zu beitreten? (What should we do to join you)"

"Die Feinde der CSB vernichten. Alliierten und Rald Regimenter. (The CSB's enemies to annihilate. Allied forces and Rald Regiments)"

"Einfach. Es wird geschehen (Simple. It will be done) " Schwarze 2 nodded, as he turned his craft to engage the incoming Svafnir squad. There were like Ofnir and Grabacr, young squadrons fed with propaganda. Like them they had chosen a snake-like symbol and a snake-like camo. And like them their twelve men strong would meet their end here and now. Their Typhoons who bear this grey and red snake camo that could look like flames for some would end up in very realistic flames.

"Und was ist mit dir, Netz Schaft und Schwarze Luchs (And what about you, Netz squad and Dark Lynx)?"

"Wir werden die CSB's Feinde vernichten. (we will annihilate the enemies of the CSB)" Was Netz leader response, a serious and stern tone. It was the best way to protect his people for now.

"Ich werde, solange ich kann Hypersthene Bewaffnung haben. (I will, as long as I can get some Hypersthene weaponry) " Was the obviously less serious response of the still undercover Iskanda. Even if she was quite afraid that soon her cover would blow and then she would be blown sky high. So, she chose to enjoy this last battle as long as it could last.

"Gut, gut. Der erste wahre Kampf fängt jetzt an (Good, good. The first true battle begins now)." Gault 1 announced, with renewed confidence filling his voice. Then he directed the forces for this battle to come.

"Netz Squad und Luchs mit mir gegen die Alliierten. Schwarze gegen Svafnir (Netz squad and SLuchs with me against the Allies. Schwarze against Svafnir.)" Were Kupchenko's orders. At the very moment he spoke about the allies, eleven dots approaching the very badly damaged F-14D were revealed clear: there were eleven Osean F-35A Lightnings with a dark grey stealth camo and a low visibility emblem made of a ball of lightning.

"Thunderbolt 1 to all, attack!" The Osean leading the F-35A unit spoke up, yet with less confidence than Kupchenko.

"Verrat ist tot, Schwarze! (Treason is death) " Svafnir 1 shouted at the MiG-31 squad that had turned to engage his, trying to turn the very argument Schwarze 3 used to justify him firing at a Grabacr plane. But eight against twelve was almost an overkill for Zubov's point of view, and as such, he chose to laugh at them.

The MiG-31s had adopted the classic grand chase formation, made of two lines of four planes. The first would use the great velocity of their plane to enact quick hit and run attack, disorganizing the enemy squadron's defense, while the four further away would lay waste on the enemy using SAAMs and XLAAs. Sometimes they would use QAAMs for more agile fighters if they had high tech squadron as their target, but the MiG-21s they had been called to take down were not high enough in this standard. Their Foxhounds would carry UGBLs when dealing with people running away using cars, train or ships.

The first four aircraft led the head-on charge, missile locked and gun blazing, despite the great number of enemy EF-2000 firing XLAA at them. Four Typhoons were shot down in the process, while the Foxhounds were and remained untouched as they seemed to flee after their first engagement. But it was all a mere trap to lure the Svafnir squad. The survivors made the deadly mistake to try to fire XLAAs at the seemingly fleeing aircraft, and in doing this they let their now six hours unchecked. Volleys of XLAAs and SAAMs ripped the squadron apart, while Belkan screams and shouts could be heard on the radio, with most of them containing insults and the word "Verrat". The very few that had survived this onslaught were terminated when the four MiG-31s that attacked them first turned back to the battle and released a final XLAAs and SAAMs volley.

The Thunderbolt squadron did last at least a bit longer than the Belkan enemies of the CSB. Even if the numbers were six to eleven, they couldn't claim they had numerical superiority over airplane and pilots far above their league. Four of them were shot down early on as they were only getting in range for their QAAMs. They had thought their stealth would have at least allowed them to do so. But some of the Merlin Satellites had been activated in "Falkenauge" (Eagle Eye) mode, thus transmitting the precise location of the stealth Osean prototypes to the Su-47 through PM radio. Two more were down when Iskanda attacked the craft from below as they were about to open fire. Her first gun burst land right in his weapon bays, resulting in an enormous explosion. Then she dived and sent a HEFR on a second one as she was flying below him. He tried to send the QAAMs in his bays backward to counter this attack, but they only connected to the craft and not the rocket. As such his aircraft went down when the proximity fuse rockets sent shrapnels in his inner bays.

Evading a pair of QAAMs for an agile fighter like the Su-47s was quite easy to be honest for Iskanda, and after losing them with a small whirring session she pulled out an Himmelman to go back to battle once more. At one point she had a little fear, when she strafed a F-35 from behind, curving a bit her path to the left and semi-inverting her craft during the said strafe to ensure she would end it on another one. Because Gault 1 enacted the same maneuver but coming from the front and going to the right. Had he recognized his aircraft, if it was really him? His question filled with curiosity made the likelihood even higher:

"Von wem haben sie dieses Flugzeug erreichten?" (from whom did you obtain this plane)

"Von einem verstorbenen Pilot. (From a fallen pilot)." She answered, with the fear of being discovered turning her very small Belkan accent off. It sounded awfully foreign even to her ears from her experience of having heard quite a lot of Belkan this last days. But to be honest, she wasn't fully lying now: the man that once piloted her current craft was surely not the same man that Kupchenko was now. Yet the man itself was fully alive, in complete opposite to her expectation.

"Hoch Interessant (Very interesting)." He commented, before gunning a F-35 on his left, creating holes on all of its fuselage. The riddled engine exploded five seconds later.

And unfortunately for the CSB, the Thunderbolt squad obtained one kill. It happened as Schwarze Luchs and Netz 2 were chasing two different planes. Both had already managed to land several hits on their single-engine opponent, hampering their speed greatly. Yet the two Osean planes set themselves on a collision course, wanting to try some last second evasive that would result in the destruction of their enemies. It didn't go their way fully, however the result was negative for the CSB forces.

"Verschlossen." Iskanda announced, as she launched two missiles, aiming for the F-35's tail section. The Osean plane tried with the energy of despair to escape the projectiles by banking in the opposite direction he had planned to go when they would do their last-ditch evasive maneuvers. He only managed to lose one missile of his tail, and the lose missile hit his fellow Lightning pilot near his single air intake. This resulted in one badly damaged plane hitting an ablaze one, and a big reddish explosion. Iskanda had already turned far away from these two aircraft by now, but Netz 2 was a bit slow to react. As such, some flying metallic parts hit him head-on, heavily injuring his plane. He ejected five seconds later after pitching his aircraft to be sent in the opposite direction the still lingering mid-air bright explosion.

The last two F-35 were shot down by two SAAMs fired at them by Su-27s or Su-47s, with the not very agile stealth fighters having hard time to fool the tracking pod on theses far more agile aircraft. In the meantime, Pixy, which hadn't been bothered at all by any of the Confederation of South Belka crafts, had already filled with bullets the body of Grabacr two. Now he was facing Grabacr 1 head-on for the third time in a row, with his nemesis' Berkut having holes in his rear control surfaces and with one canard missing. Pixy flew above him as the last Rald Regiment members was releasing four missiles, two standard and two SAAMs, hoping to vaporize his opponent. Ashley had thought that the loss of Galm 1 would have made the merc weaker and alone. He was wrong. Now all the rage that Pixy had built up for a bit less than three months was being released, and it had targeted him. All of his squadmates were dead. When for an instant he saw a shadow hovering him with a Scythe ready to strike at him.

But it wasn't an apparition to be honest: Pixy had made his aircraft fall flat on his back before zooming in at full afterburner. He enacted a half loop toward the damaged Berkut and plunged like a falcon on his prey -he knew he was piloting an F-15C Eagle so this term could seem out of place-. And it was the shadow of the F-15C falling on him that the North Belkan saw. The gun burst Pixy fired torn off the tail of the Berkut, resulting in a pretty big explosion as the engine were split in half. But as he barrel-rolled around the fuming debris of the plane, he saw an ejection rocket being fired.

"JETZT, JETZT, DU BIST TOT, ASHLEY BERNITZ! (And Now, you're dead, Ashley Bernitz" He said as he climbed toward the chute projected falling point. There he released two static FAEBs -he had expressly asked for Herr Steller to find a way to made him carry two of them-. Was it to honor his fallen leader, or to have the full and utter satisfaction of having disintegrated his nemesis? He wasn't sure, maybe both. But he felt great relief when he saw the two bright explosions in the sky above him, with the last member of the Grabacr unit being caught into their shockwaves and heatwaves and turned into light and vapor. Now his vengeance was complete. Laura could rest in peace, since her tormentors would never reach it. He only wished them eternal damnation.

A bit further away from this utterly not cold vengeance, Iskanda grinned a bit, having seen someone use her static FAEBs. And she was happy that she had helped Pixy finish his vengeance. But right now, her and Gault 1 were rushing toward the last Osean fighter in the vicinity, a lone damaged F-14D.

"Wie viel Männer man braucht, eine Nachrichte zu senden? (How many mans does it take to send a message?) " Kupchenko rhetorically asked to this pilot named Schwarze Luchs.

"Nur ein." The response of the female pilot was short but filled with determination. Such pilot could be useful in his foreseen strategies.

"Eigentlich." Gault ein responded, before overrunning the Osean Super Tomcat. Then to Iskanda's surprise, he pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver. Apparently, she had inspired him not only in his decision to fight Ulysses. The F-14D pilot pulled the trigger instinctively, but Kupchenko had pitched upward while enacting the high G maneuvers, ensuring his safety. His following move was to pitch downward, but he only gunned the rear of the craft, leaving the pilot alive, but being sure to injure heavily the WSO.

"John, eject." Bartlett shouted, even if the wind coming through the destroyed canopy was nullifying anything he said. He was ready to pull the ejection handle, but only choked rales could be heard from behind him. He tilted and rotated on his seat to check his WSO and friend's state, but he only saw a vision of horror: he spotted several large bullet holes on his chest, and even one on his face. The next second he saw a very blood-stained hand pulling his ejection handle from behind, while incomprehensive speech was heard coming from behind him.

His dying WSO had pulled his handle as he was unable to do so, paralyzed by the horror he just witnessed. Helplessly, he could only see the pitch-black camo climbing over the F-14D before firing one of his explosive rockets. Now he was sure his friend was dead as the fuming debris were falling toward the ground, not very far from the craft of the Belkan fugitive.

"Kampf ist ein Sieg. Alles, Zurück nach Tauberg. (This battle is a Victory. All, Back to Tauberg)." He stated, after seeing Schwarze Luchs leveling right beside him, but slightly behind him out of visual sight. He was letting Foulke get away. After all, he helped them greatly by taking down almost by himself the whole Grabacr Rald Regiment. He had earned his survival and was now leaving too. Pixy knew he couldn't win against all of these aircraft.

"Und von wem haben Sie diese erstaunlichen Manöver gelernt, mein Lieber? (And who taught you this amazing maneuver, my dear)." She asked, like he had asked from who she had got this fighter, who was fitting her: as unstable as her former and now destroyed X-29A, but with better response and a greater variety of armament to be mounted.

"Von einem verstorbenen Pilote. (From a fallen pilot)" He repeated his answer, since he could guess that the Iskanda that wanted to desperately pull the sword out of the rock was dead now. Or he thought so for an instant, letting his strategy depend of one contingency.

"Hoch Interessant." She repeated too, grinning, as they were leaving the Ustian side of B7R. What was going to happen afterwards, she had no idea. But she had obtained victory today, she had met her on the battlefield once more. Finally, she authorized herself a little bit of relief, as she could feel the sweet sensation of having been filled with adrenalin once more. She had felt it on the ground when taking down these Oseans too, but it would never be the same from a fighter.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 05/06/1995, 15:10, Weather: medium cloud coverage, chances of rain.**

Unlike B7R that was mostly covered by thin high-altitude stratus, Tauberg was surrounded by quite a lot of well-sized clouds at medium altitude. Maybe the constant vertical fire of Excalibur had disorganized the air currents around here. And to add even more clouds, smoke was coming out of many crash sites all around the Belkan Wunderwaffen.

From her Su-47 she could see fairly well all the Osean, Yukte or Sapin fighters that had died since operation Jugement. And it was only a small portion of the gargantuan number of allied casualties caused by Excalibur, as most attackers would get disintegrated by the Belkan TFLS, TLSs and RTLSs. If the Pendragon Projekt had some way to salvage the metal of all the planes they shot down they might have enough resources to build a second Excalibur, she guessed based on the number of allied losses that were surely far above the hundred planes by now.

Right now, the four other Gault squad members and the two Erben were circling around the tower. The small anomalies on her radar indicated that there had been a fight here recently, since the air was still a bit ionized due to the energy-based weapons. Today they had added another nationality of victims to their list: their former Belkan one they discarded in favor of their newly formed CSB. They had been called secessionist during this battle, and she was wondering which name they would bear later on.

"Excalibur zu alle CSBs Jäger: Landeklar. (Excalibur for all CSB fighters: clear for landing)." A Belkan voice announced from the airbase North of the Sword of Kings.

"Gut. Schwarze und Netz erst, denn Gault und die Erben (Good. Schwarze and Net first, then Gault and the Heirs)." Were Kupchenko's orders for the landing. Four MiG-31 went North since the large twin runways oriented like an open scissor allowed such multiple landing.

Iskanda was a bit uneasy. Maybe admitting she was "a bit" uneasy was the understatement of the millennia. Seeing all these turrets and defensive armaments as blue squares when a few weeks ago they were an ocean of red targets was quite disturbing to say the least. The little bit of duty she still had in her was screaming to open fire at the Belkans while she was still under relative cover. But on the other hand, she wouldn't have never survived today's battle if she had just fought alone.

She flew toward the air base, accompanying the three last Gault member and Netz 1. All pilots had landed but her, Kupchenko and the ADFX-01s. She just had to pull the trigger and most of the defenders of Excalibur would be down. Yet three things filled her with great reluctance: first, the fact that she owed them her life. Multiple times over B7R she had been locked and would have surely got hit if it wasn't for a well-aimed SAAM from either Netz, Schwarze or even Gault squad members. In other words, she wouldn't have met victory today but death. And when she ran into Crow 2, she did let him live, as she fired in a non-life-threatening zone.

The second thing was a more down-to-earth reason: the tree she had set her firing spot on, and which had been hit shortly after her shot, had been reduced to ashes by only one RTLS shot. The third was the RTLS surrounding the twin runways, backed up by what seemed to be a new type of SAMs that was identified as "ZAS" on her HUD, and even some BAWS near the base buildings itself.

And above all else, the problematic given by Ste Victoire's apparition was echoing her mind like the bells inside the eponymous cathedral. Was willst du, sich zu werden? What do you want to become? Taken over by stress, and with her hand shaking on the firing button on her HOTAS, she was now feeling the doubt growing within her. What was the reason for her to push the device? Pretty much none that were convenient. But then why did her shaking hand accidently or willingly push it the next second, aiming to the armored domed hangar where the craft of Schwarze were being parked? Only her fear caused it. Or something like that, that had been building up since she was shot down in this same place weeks ago in very different circumstances.

Whatever the reason was, the result was the same: a RTLS located a few dozen meters on the median line in front of the meeting point of the twin runways intercepted her missiles using its twin four small tactical laser system turrets. Her laughable attempt was the result of a failure and now a full failure. The next second she heard a sinister laugh over the waves, while her HUD was turning red.

"Dachten Sie, ich wäre dumm genug, du nicht wiedererkennen? (Did you think I was foolish to the point I would not recognize you?) Dein Belkan ist gut, aber nicht genug. Wie immer. Zu neutral war dein Akzent. (Your Belkan is good but not enough. As always. Your accent too neutral was)." Kupchenko stated with a very cold voice, reiterating that whatever she tried, it wouldn't be efficient enough to harm him, before adding in a whisper "Iskanda Rayien."

"Ich musste versuchen. Wie haben Sie Cyanide überleben?" She responded, quite surprised to learn that apparently there was things that allowed to survive cyanide. She was dead sure she hit him with it. But he wasn't dead, or the rumors that Belkan used dark magic were true.

"B zwölf (12)." Was the short answer he completed the next second: "ein Überdosis von B12, auch als Hydroxycobalamin gekannt, kann jemanden erlauben, Cyanide zu überleben."

So, he had very likely survived due to the knowledge in chemistry of the exiled poison maker Kellerman told her about. This was the most plausible explanation to how in matter of means. But how did he know about her attempt, this was another mystery to solve. Were there traitors to the allied forces inside their own ranks? Were they even considering themselves to be traitor anyway, if they thought fighting for this nation that had the means to nullify the Ulysses' threat was the right thing to do? There was no way Günthar could have had access to a means of communication, and Ervin was surely watched very closely by the Oseans at Valais.

Again, she was a bit lost in her thoughts, and as such she let Kupchenko leave the airspace above the airbase. He chose to wait near Excalibur for the fight that was about to begin. And it was its beginning that chase all those thoughts of treason from Iskanda's mind, to replace with something more primal: rage, violence and death. Three things that had allowed her to live until here. The rage fuel her fight. The violence characterized her fights. And the Death was only what her fight would cause. She had never been very good at protective fight nor escort missions anyways.

"We have already defeated you once, and we will do it again." The Erbe identified as "Zveda" announced what she thought to be the result of the oncoming battle: their victory, and her defeat.

"Kein "Amber Plan" heute! (No Amber plan today)!" Iskanda retorted, as she was attacking them head on.

"Ich sehe. Du studierst ehemalige Sprache (I see. Did you study ancient languages?" Kupchenko asked from afar, trying to understand if she had gotten what "Amber" meant. If she did maybe she would surprise him.

"Ja. Und Amber steht für Elektrizität! (Yes. And amber stand for electricity.)" She explained, having remembered this from an old physics book she had read in her free time in the convent, as she recalled her story to Kellerman, who find her quite interesting, very singular.

" TEGS on." The other Erbe counter-argued with this "Schwarze Luchs" pilot, willing to enact once again this victorious idea. A small compartment below left engine was opened, and from there the Towed Electromagnetic pulse Generator System was jettisoned and began emitting strong electromagnetic waves. Of course, the ADFX-01s possessed a very strong resilience against this kind of armament, as they were meant to be used even if nuclear class III EMPs were used. He had no worry about that. But the aircraft in front of him, which was going head-on despite the danger of fighting Morgans, was worrying him a bit. Furthermore, the fight prior to this one, was against a great number of Belkans attackers, and had depleted their stock of ERAAMs. She could consider to be lucky, Cipher mused.

Even if her radar had become inoperable due to the strong EMIs her enemies were generating, Iskanda did not turn back. She would fight. And this time, she was considering herself to be on an equal stance technologically speaking. Of course, her Su-47 and their ADFX-01s were not technological equals, but the disparities were smaller than when she had her former X-29A. She went straight, right in the middle of their two-plane formation. Both opened fire instantaneously as they were in range, which seemed to be greater than her standard missiles'. Luckily for her they had fired with a bit of time between each other's shot, and she was able to evade all four missiles fired in quick succession by flying closer and closer to the ground, while doing small whirring session. Yet they missed her barely, as the missiles flew by her, maybe less than a dozen meters away.

She heard some curse as she managed to successfully evade their fire. Now it was her time to strike. She pulled out a head-to-tail maneuver and fired her only non-lockable weapon besides her gun. The HEFR went right to the ADFX at her five hours, apparently not bothered by the magnetic pulses. The proximity fuse that guided a bit the warhead in the last hundred meters seemed to be attracted by the magnetic waves more than anything else, turning their very defensive system against them, and acting more as an anti-radiation missile than a rocket. This caused a bit of fear to grow in the heart of the two Erbe. And before they could turn away to be far enough, the HEFR was on them. Desperately, Cipher tried to explode it by increasing the energetic output of the TEGS, and it worked in the end, the powerful magnetic waves interfering with the proximity fuses, like a tsunami would have been powerful enough to detonate mines. However, this increased in power caused only the counter-reaction to be more violent, when shrapnels of the HEFR impacted the TEGS, which caused the Erbe to lose control of his plane for a short amount of time.

In the meantime, their adversary had already pulled out another of her head-to-tail maneuver and had managed to go under the other Erbe as it steered right to evade the HEFR, still with her TEGS on. Zveda was unable to fire successfully on the nimbler aircraft, that had resorted to the same tactic to avoid her fire, this very low flying while turning and twisting her plane like a madman. Or a madwoman for her case. The Erbe would have not try to fly in such ways, even if she flew a Mirage or a Rafale -two aircraft notorious for their low-level stability-. And then Schwarze Luchs pitched her aircraft high as she went below the Morgan, a very risky position that could sent her right into a deadly stall do to her very close proximity to the ground. Again, this was something Zveda would have not try to do.

However, Iskanda had no fear of the Wesson-UFOs by now. And as she pitched, she managed to land some hit on the system towing the pulse emitter. Apparently, she had hit its energy input, as the level of EMIs suddenly decreased. And she was able to fire two missiles at the small target after getting in the six of the Erbe by a high-G Himmelman. The TEGS's explosion shook the ADFX-01 quite a lot, but as this loss of defense suppress the drag it was creating, the powerful twin engines were able to propel the Morgan far away from her missile range. And when it was far away, a small bay was opened below her left engine, and a second TEGS was activated. Of course, the other Erbe enacted the same strategy, and Iskanda radar become grey in an instant. It was a temporary setback after a temporary victory. But soon she would obtain a total one, she swore while touching her jade harpoon. Feeling it remembered her of the rage and violence she had shown and cause that day. She had not caused death, but the will of causing it in the near future fuel her with great determination, as she would not allow herself to die before having caused a happy matricide. And with a rage similar to what Pixy felt when fighting the Grabacr, she caught up with the two Morgans.

She had learned from the previous fight. Do not climb after them. Below them was always a better option, as for some unknown reason to her, the waves were somewhat weaker below than above their planes. She was more than halfway in the range of her HEFR when she pulled out a head-to-tail, and fire her forelast rocket. But instead of going straight and enacting a second one to be back to the chase once more, she began a big vertical loop toward the female Erbe she had targeted. Again, the TEGS was severely hit by the HEFR's explosion, and caused a loss of control for the female pilot. Furthermore, its very bright explosion had blinded her for her rear, and as such Zveda did not see the bird of prey diving right on her.

" Fortune favors the bold" Iskanda thought, as she realized the foolishness of what she was going to do. She dived right on the Morgan, but not aiming for the cockpit. No, she aimed at the gap between its massive engines. She just hoped the aircraft would be wide enough, and her thin enough. To be sure the Morgan would move less than it would, she fired at the opened airbrake, which consisted of two metallic plating folded upward and downward, which had been extended by the Belkan female pilot to help recover from her loss of control. Hit critically in its actuator, the airbrakes remained stuck, greatly slowing the ADFX-01.

"Was machen Sie?" Zveda shouted, deeply worried that the stolen Su-47 would be kamikazed against her lightly damaged plane.

She did not get any response. Or just a nasty gun burst on her left engine, right before she saw the unthinkable happened in her rearview camera display. It was even more unthinkable than when her Meister had been locked on by this same pilot a few month ago, due to the unconventional use of a belly radar. Then, as she expected to see the Su-47 hit the ground, due to the great speed she had fallen with, nothing happened.

Or cutting a tree part was nothing apparently, as it was what happened when Iskanda pitched high again in a difficult effort to level her plane. She did prevent her Su-47 to hit a tree head-on, but a tree part was moving due to the wind created by the Morgan's jet wash above her, and her forward swept-wing cut right through the thin wood, before she was right below the Morgan. She hit its powerful belly armor, that she expected to go through like butter and kill the pilot above. She roared in desperation as she had to bank left a bit to avoid mid-air collision. However, her bullet had an unexpected effect, for both her and the Belkan pilot. They had detached a few parts of the Belkan plane plating, not enough to endanger its structural integrity, but enough to greatly damaged the engines as these small parts were sucked into at great speed, as the Morgan was accelerating to avoid this damned merc. And unfortunately for the Belkan pilot, her remaining right engine was destroyed in the process. The left one was still running, but a red warning message appeared on her already red HUD "GEFAHR, REAKTORSÜBERDRUCK". With great reluctance, she pulled the ejection handle. The ADFX-01 kept flying for some seconds before the left engine blow from the inside and disperse the plane in a cloud of composites and titanium.

" Fortuna ist ... auf Seiten der Mutigen (Fortune favors the bold)!" Iskanda repeated happily as she went hunting for the second ADFX-01, this time in their language, showing them that odds were never the same. They had not the same circumstances than last time. Last time, she had her airplane damaged by laser artillery and Kupchenko's gun before she had the opportunity to fight them.

"Undenkbar (impossible)." Muttered the second Erbe in awe, as he was running toward Excalibur, hoping the sheer firepower of the fortress would shield him from the enemy attacker. It was the first time of the entire Belkan war than an ADFX-01 had been shot down.

He thought she would not try to follow him, as once again he put the energy input of the TEGS far above air's disruptive field. Lightning were now surrounding the TEGS, and some were even striking at the nearby trees, causing small fire here and there. But with the humid atmosphere, they would not spread that much.

Indeed, she suffered from the increased in power input of the TEGS. Yet, unlike his former X-29A, the Su-47 chose not to try to bear the electricity induced by the near pulse generator. So, the onboard trim computers shut down by themselves, one by one, rendering the Berkut infinitesimally harder to maintain stable than any other plane she had ever flew. She felt than even the smallest push of wind would make her roll over. She was constantly adjusting her airplane stability manually, feeling shaken terribly with each second passing. But with each second passing, she was closer to the ADFX-01. By luck the aircraft engine seemed to have a good resilience against the electric currents, or she wouldn't have been able to keep such speeds. If she could have seen her aircraft, she would have seen that the flames created by her afterburners were glowing even brighter than usual, due to the air being hotter than usual due to the lightnings the TEGS was inducing.

She was finally in range of firing her gun at the TEGS when a strong lighting hit her, paralyzing her electric actuators in her canards. But the next second, a small indicator was on and glowing with a faint blue light, indicating " hydraulisch Notfallsaktuator", and she regained her mobility suddenly. She thanked Kupchenko in spirit for using optic fiber that was way more lightning-resilient and redundancy in his former fighter, and managed to pitch downward, before rolling leftward and finally firing on the fourth TEGS. It exploded quite violently, shaking both planes a lot. Yet, her pitch-black camo helped her a bit to deal with the bright explosion, while the shinier paintjob of the Morgan reverberated a bit of light to the Belkan pilot, blinding him for longer than her.

He did not see her coming from below. And like his know fallen wingmate, he did not immediately see his enemy pitching hard and with a foolish audacity, climbing between his engine, but not before having fired one of her missiles at the right one. Still, he did realize what she was doing and try to roll to catch her aircraft between his engines. He only succeeded in making her turn away a bit to avoid being hit by the massive engine. And as he tried to turn to engage her as she was climbing below her, he was hit by her last HEFR. He bailed out instantaneously, and he saw helplessly his ablaze aircraft being intercepted by the fire of the laser artillery around the external layer of solar panels. Them, two of the best Belkan pilots, equipped with the best available aircraft in the world, had been downed by a lesser one, but maybe they didn't possess the same determination she had showed in this short dogfight.

And she used the distraction of the falling ADFX-01 to get closer to Excalibur, around which Kupchenko was circling. She was about to fire at him head-on when he hit the deck hard, inverting his airplane while diving to do a Split-S toward the diagonal support linking the hemi-cylindrical structure to the ground. Iskanda did not waste a single moment to pursue him, but the second after he passed by the support, the TLSs on them and above on the cross fired in unison. And as she had approached them head-on, while facing the face of the double cross guard and not its side, she felt like she had hit some kind of aerial barrier as she was pushed away by the strength of the explosion of her own armor plating. She felt more shaken that she had never been, even if she had already been shaken a lot by the small explosion of the TEGSs and had to turn away in order to avoid annihilation. She turned away, growling in frustration. The firepower of the Wunderwaffe had nearly destroyed her fighter, which was blaring at her "STRUKTURELLE INTEGRITÄT GEFÄHRDET" (structural integrity compromised), with all her indicators being nothing more than red lines, and with her HUD now gone, having being hit too.

The damage was terrific: her forward canards were gone, and her rudders and had been severely reduced by the firepower. Her rear radomes were nothing but two duraluminium sieves by now. She was glad she had fired her last missile at Kupchenko when he dived, because if she had kept it, it would have detonated inside her missile bay, which had been hit pretty hard. The afterburners were not working any more, and all her landing system had been critically damaged, with the tires exploding inside their housings, damaging her plane from the inside. Even if she knew she had no need of tire to land at the mausoleum bunker, she knew these inner explosions had not done any good to her already critically damaged plane.

There was even impacts on the canopy. There, the laser pulse had just gone through it, sublimating the glass on their path, and projecting small pieces of burning glass on her, which were hit enough to burn her, even through her suit. She even had to extinguish some nascent flames on her suit caused by these burning pieces of glass. Fortunately, her helmet protected her head enough to avoid serious injuries. Still she had no choice, given her critical state.

And with her heart filled by a cold rage she had no way of dissipating it, she definitively turned away from the battlefield. After all, she had stated as she went to the skies today that she had no or very few chances to pull out the Sword of Kings. She had been proved right, but hopefully not deadly right. Her fuming aircraft retreated, leaving behind it a trail of black smoke. Of course, she heard nothing from the current talks on the waves, with all her antennas destroyed. Almost all avionics were destroyed too, with her radar screen showing nothing but grey.

"Gault 8, I will have a message for two of your compatriots." Gault leader asked to the Sapin member of his team. He had no point in engaging this retreating aircraft. And the Schwarze squad had to be ready in case other North Belkan showed up, not hunting this "Schwarze Luchs". He had other way of destroying an adversary that simply shooting him or her down. A single pilot with goals limited to his survival and his short-term glory would have rushed for the kill. A more strategic one would have waited for the craft to be vulnerable to fire, like she had been right after her laughable attempt at taking him down. A chivalrous pilot would have let her live, refusing to fight a vulnerable foe. Indeed, she was after sustaining so much damage from Excalibur. He was now wondering how his former aircraft had even survived that. But him, he was a true tactician. He had finally set all the pieces on the chess board for both sides. And soon, he would have the opportunity to just make it topple over. Those Osean dared to think they would do the same with the Round Table. He smirked at the idea of their meaningless hope.

He then proceeded to land, while rain began to fall, extinguishing the few forest fires born out of the crashes. He didn't start the fire, he even tried to fight it. The true arsonists would be burn in their own flames, it was a certainty.

 **Schayne Plains, Belka, 05/06/1995, 15:30, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

She had barely escaped the Hell that Excalibur had unleashed on her today. Sure, she survived B7R, and this was a great achievement by itself and downing those ADFX-01s was great too. Sadly, no plane seemed to be a match for the firepower of the Sword of Kings. Even sci-fi fighters with proton torpedoes would fail if they had such technology. And she doubted that the Force could allow to try firing at the Belkan Wunderwaffe.

And she had to rely on her sight and memory to go back to Schayne, since no avionics was on. Only the compass and a few mechanized indicators were still working. Still, she almost discerned two metallic point on the horizon. Who were they? Allied or enemies, she would have to rely on eyesight, the older sensors in the book, to figure that out. In the list of offline systems there was the IFF too. Even the sensors for the structural integrity had died, resulting in a deadly silence in her plane.

However, the two pilots she had a glimpse at from afar could see her very well. Still, they couldn't have figured her side by themselves. Yet they had received a call from one of their compatriots, and this had led them here. They had an enemy of their new "friends" to shoot down:

"Gault 8 to Espada 1. ¡Derribad este Su-47 (shot down this Berkut)!" The Sapinish member of Gault squadron ordered to his compatriots, former enemies now new allies.

"Entendido, Perez." Alberto Lopez aka Espada 1 replied, and ready his SAAM tracking pod, while his wingmen was preparing her Rafale's XMAAs.

"Entendido. Para la Confederación." Espada 2 aka Marcela "Macarena" Vasquez replied.

And for a reason that was obvious for Iskanda but not to the two Sapin pilot with yellow and red planes, with the J-35J of Espada 1 having a red camo with a yellow cross on the upper side, and Espada 2 having red and yellow stripes on her wingtips, their opponent did not say anything. All they could see was a pitch-black Berkut coming head-on and leaving black smoke in its path. It was like some painter had decided to draw a dark line in the Azur.

For the same obvious reason, Iskanda had chosen to engage. After all, they wouldn't be with peaceful intent if they were going head-on too. The confirmation she couldn't get through radio come under the form of a SAAM. In addition to the critical state of her plane, she only saw it as it was pretty close to her, and it was more by luck than through skills that she evaded this one. A two-XMAA volley followed the SAAM. Them, she saw the Rafale firing them from its pilons. As such, it was easier to avoid them. Even if she almost crashed on a nearby tree as she dived in a clearing to fool the missiles. Then she proceeded to attack the two aircraft that were still unknown to her -not the aircraft themselves, but their affiliation-.

"This pilot has guts to keep fighting with that wreckage." Espada 1 shared his mind about how crazy the pilot was to be able to fly a craft with damage almost above the hundred percent. Only the rear control surfaces were left on the craft, and they had been seriously amputated.

"If it was a F-15C without wings I would have said it's Pixy, but here I have no idea." Espada 2 completed her partner. The only data they had was the added IFF through the Merlin satellite they had just been connected, and the name "Schwarze Luchs" it was showing them didn't ring any bells.

Still, despite having to evade a second volley of two XMAAs, which it did by pitching hard and climbing leftward, before it stalled and dived, the Su-47 was keeping its forward motion. The Espada team thought for a couple seconds that it was going straight to its doom, but the pilot managed to level the fighter very close to the ground. It was so close that if it had lowered its gear it could have taxied on the ground.

Flying below the two aircraft, Iskanda evaded the close-range missiles as well as their gun. She had seen in the Futuro canal fighters being torn apart by a Sapin Rafale gun, and she had no will to try its effect. Obviously, it would be less powerful than the anti-air artillery of Excalibur, but her aircraft could not suffer any more damage. As she flew below them, she could get a better glimpse at her opponent: she had sighted the Sapin insignia, but not the squadron. She would identify them later. Now was the time to fight, not to talk. She hastily pulled a head-to-tail maneuver, with every inch of her aircraft vibrating heavily like it would tear itself apart in the process.

Arriving in the six of the J-35J she had surprised by this sudden change of vector, she opened fire. Her last gun shells it its tail hard. Smoke began to pour from the enemy fighter, which tried to run away, nevertheless. Maybe if she had had her radio still on, she would have shouted at him for being a coward. But the Rafale, which had accelerated after seeing it had a fighter in his six, was not running away. Instead, it enacted an Himmelman, and attacked her head-on.

Having learn from her precedent shots on this specific enemy, Espada 2 chose to fire her ammo more cautiously. She fired a first XMAA, which was evaded as the Berkut banked right. Then she fired a second one, and this time the Su-47 enacted the same tactic that just a while ago: a small climb, then used the induced stall to dive below her aircraft level's. But this time the Sapin pilot had launched a third one only a split second after the second. And with the missiles having the same vector, her enemy which had only visual sensors only saw the second one. As such, as the Su-47 was entering its induced stall climb, its right wing was blown off by the air-to-air missile. The power of the explosion pushed the Su-47 away like it was nothing.

Iskanda was not pushed as much as she had been pushed by the firepower of the Belkan fortress, but she felt her whole body being shaken like a leaf in a storm. Still, being pushed this far away from the trajectory of the Rafale allowed her to evade the fire of her enemy. She was even able to get in her target six's afterwards, but to which use: she had no more weaponry available. There was no way she could down this damned Rafale. If she had very powerful engines, she could have tried to use her afterburner's thrust to destabilize it and send it crashing, but she had no such engines. She had not much of her engines left anyway.

As she looked at her severed wind and its cutting edge, a desperate tactic come to her mind. To use the cutting edge as a true "cutting" edge. In a certain way, she would use it as a "bord d'attaque" (attack edge), like her Erusean fellow pilots would call it in their native tongue back in Farbanti. Determined to end this fight, she used the last thrust still in her engines to catch up with her enemy, and then pulled out a final head-to-tail.

Espada 2 didn't understand what the Belkan pilot was willing to enact. Maybe she was a bit too much worried about her captain's fate. Which wasn't bright, as she had heard grievous wound noise when the Su-47 fired its last salvos. And now it was retreating, flying line astern, like he had trouble controlling his plane. It was comprehensible, his tail and rudder having suffered great damage, and the pilot maybe even greater. It was an utter surprise when the Su-47 rushed at her, looking for a ram attempt. She was ready for the worse, and the shock was terrible indeed, but it was not the worse she could have gotten: she thought the enemy pilot would try to slit the canopy and hit the cockpit.

Iskanda only went through the back of the plane with her cutting edge, creating a spectacular shower of sparks. The next second after her violent fly-by, she saw the Rafale fuming, as she had hit it in its engine critically. But she had suffered greatly from the impact too, with new impact on the few pristine parts of her aircraft. If she had her radio on, she would have surely heard some insult commencing by "Puta" or something like that, since she had attacked a Sapin team.

The engine of the Rafale couldn't bear the damage it suffered, especially the afterburners section. The fuel injectors had been shattered in a thousand pieces, and the shower spark had set it ablaze instantaneously. With her aircraft in fire and no more engine, the Sapin female pilot had to bail out. Her craft explode over the plains a few seconds later, and she felt the heat of the explosion. Of course, nothing like a static FAEB, but it was impressive though.

Iskanda was well aware than a similar fate was waiting for her. And even if she had no fire onboard, she was no more capable of evading anything. Furthermore, she thought for an instant having seen a DW-3. If they were capable of taking down entire waves of allied bombers, there was no doubt their ERAAMs would make quick work of her very badly damaged plane. She ejected, not that far from her Sapin opponent.

Indeed, she must have seen one, as her craft was struck by a supersonic missile. The missile breaking the sound barrier and later exploding her craft was surely enough to break her eardrums, because she didn't hear anything for a few seconds.

Once again, she had barely survived. She sobbed as she descended in her chute, getting in the depth of sadness and despair when she had thought she would reach the heights of joy after her victory. Apparently, such emotions were owned, and she didn't.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 05/06/1995, 15:35, Weather: outcast.**

"Pixy, you're clear to land." Were how the only allied survivors of this second Battle Axe, and third engagement over B7R was greeted by his radio tower.

"Roger. On my way." He replied shortly, lowering his gear and extending his airbrakes. Today he was coming back with a sense of accomplishment. He landed quickly and taxied to his hangar, that would maybe stay forever empty of a second user. Now the only other aircraft in the base were some transports. And the Nord 1500 Griffon, but he was not foolish enough to try it, not in this world at least.

He expected the Osean Major to call for him to come to the briefing room, but instead, it was the Osea that come to him. Maybe he had something special to report. What they were aiming to get from that fugitive was a mystery, and he could be coming here to clarify it, Pixy guessed, as he saw the Osean walking toward the hangar as he climbed down the latter. Before the speech of the Osean he received the congratulations of Herr Steller for not crashing nor damaging his aircraft too much.

"Mister Larry Foulke. You're alive. How unexpected it is." Perrault began his speech with an odd voice. Pixy couldn't foresee what was coming next from it a single bit.

"I did survive. Maybe these CSB guys let me go because I indirectly helped them by downing the Grabacr squadron." Pixy tried to find a reason for Kupchenko to let him live, scratching the back of his head as he was thinking about it.

"We couldn't send choppers for S&R, but the GHQ is pretty optimistic about the fact that there could be other survivors. Anyway, you did well out there. This squad was responsible for the loss of dozens of pilots in the earlier days of this war. Dismissed and enjoy your free time before we called you back to the fray." Perrault ended this unofficial briefing without any display nor informatics. After all, did they really need to display what this battle had resulted in: an utter victory for the CSB. They had won B7R and the Schwarze team.

"Strange." Was how Pixy gauged this debriefing. Quite strange was the set of minds of the Osean. He almost seemed to be relaxed. What were the Osean plotting that could make them smile after an horrific defeat that costed them the lives of dozens of pilots and billions of zollars of military assets, especially these F-35As that had been dispatched as cannon fodder in a vain attempt to get this fugitive in one piece.

Even stranger was the fact that Perrault wasn't criticizing him for his choice of engagement, nor blaming him for their losses in any ways. Sure, he could've maybe ensured this kid's survival if didn't get this harsh on the Grabacr and focused a bit more on his allies. But he wanted this vengeance. Now he had consumed it to the bitter end, even if right now this vengeance seemed more sweeter than ether rather than bitter-sweet like people always describe vengeances.

Still, he got some intel as he discussed with Henri of some messages he heard on the waves, with some about their now M.I.A. leader. Apparently, they had not found any remains of the AWACS that could steer their thoughts toward death or survival. It had exploded in mid-air according to the radar data, and the few Osean commandos that were managing to survive had only found mere pieces of it spread across a wide area in the North West of Glatisant. They said that they had to wear battle helmet due to parts falling like rainfall, as the consequences of the huge number of allied casualties. Even if these data were thin, he chose to share them with a person very concerned about this.

"So, my brother is either dead or missing. Great news." Magdalena chose to go ironic about the fate of her sibling rather than go into drama and burst into tear on the line. It was better for her not to be sure about his fate. This uncertainty was leaving room for enough optimism.

"On the other hand, you know, this pilot I ranted about when we visited the Technical Museum?" Pixy tried to share his success to steer the talk on a happier note.

"Ja, diese Ashley?" She recalled, having had that day a hard time considering that this was a guy's name and not a girl's. Even if she was pretty sure the gender of his target was not something that would matter to Pixy.

"Well, I terminated him. Like Gelb 1 was." Pixy proudly announced that he had indeed killed this man through static FAEBs. Quite a horrible way to die, he assumed it. But he had owned this death. Ashley Bernitz had owned to be slain with all of Pixy's hatred.

"Great. I guess Ste Victoire, or some Goddess of War blessed you today. Or maybe some old Emmerian king was smiling at you." She quoted some beings that often people would thank for having been favored in battle.

"Why not a bit of all of them." Pixy concluded this topic, shrugging at the idea that he would be a paw inside the hands of some all-powerful being. Maybe he was a paw in a strategy of some people, but these were not gods or kings for all he knew. Just mans like him, who wanted to end or turn this war in some ways.

Then they dithered a bit about the becoming of her daughters, who were greatly helping her to cope with the quite sinister fate of her brother. They were a bit sad about the unknown fate of his leader too, having had a good time in her company, laughing as she went into mens' clothing shop. At least they had the chance to live in a pretty peaceful city. Directus had been liberated, and now it had been liberated from the weight of the war due to the Excalibur strikes on the Airport, which had caused no civilian casualties. Of course, they had caused losses in matter of military assets. And since, the contingent of Osean were slowly being dispatched to either the front or the backlines, were they had at least some usefulness. To be fair, Pixy gauged in the end, what effort of the allied forces was useful to their cause or the state of the frontlines? The first had seen their international supporters diminishing due to their losses, the EMP disasters in non-fighting countries like the Andamans Island while the third had been stalled for more than a month by now. And Pixy had no idea when they would move again.

 **End of chapter.  
Damned it, with the vacation (forget this word, I only had some very short one that i don't know how to translate from the French forest of abbreviation that our administration is), I did take some time to get this chapter. I guess these XMAAs (Christmas joke 1000% assumed) vacation are never helping to rest in any way. Happy new year of 2020 and for the Aurelian and Leasathian, happy new war (just kidding you guys and girls).  
So, here we are, one of the last close-to-canon mission, and the first battle of the CSB against both North Belka and the allies. There are only a few that will stick to the canon. I hope you like this second and thus uncanon battle of B7R (even if it's the third, but there was a third in the game too), which I tried to cut equally between the point of view of my antagonists and protagonists. Which lead to this chapter being quite a long one, maybe around the 25000 words or not, I don't know. I hope you'll not find it too long. I did some quote here and there to other ace combat titles and one Disney.  
Some would say the true ****Wunderwaffe** **is not Excalibur nor others, but the protagonist itself. There's a bit of truth in these words.  
So, bis nächst mal** **, Lesern und Leserinnen** **. Feel free to comment, subscribe, favor (I just figured that saying favorize was wrong) ...**

 **26/01/2020: Some grammatical mistakes fixed**


	20. Wanderung 2

**Schayne Plains, Belka, 05/06/1995, 16:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Her little emotional breakdown was over as soon as she hit the ground. Once more, she realized, she had survived the deadly Belkan Super Fortress that Excalibur was. Still, she had become quite doubtful that she would survive Kupchenko's ire a third time, especially after today. She had taken down his most advanced fighters after all. If she had done that the first time it would have been an allied victory. Right now, it was her success only.

But right now, she had another matter to tackle. She had seen the Sapin Rafale pilot bailing-out at nearly the same time than she did, and she had begun tracking this person. After a bit less than a half hour, she found her chute, tangled in some trees. His or her footprint were quite visible at that point where she had to jump from the entangled chute. At least this hadn't happened to Iskanda, as she landed in a clearing, over fallen leaves. Maybe the Sapin pilot had gotten hurt while landing, she guessed, as she was seeing irregular footprint. There was no blood anywhere, but a sprained ankle didn't make the injured person bleed, for example.

After five more minute, she heard some noise, as if someone had walked over small tree part and cracked them a bit. These allied soldiers definitively needed to improve their stealth; it was a certainty. She was now approaching him or her, she was sure, using more narrow forest path. She had kept that habit from her little walk alongside this wolfpack. Again, she would have some bruise from thorns and other tree parts, but she would get the element of surprise on this survivor.

Iskanda finally came closer to the supposedly wounded Sapin pilot. She was seeing the pilot from its back, and this person was walking slowly, this asserting to Iskanda the likelihood that this person had hurt herself while landing from her chute. However, there was something fishy about this one, Iskanda quickly deduced. She wasn't wearing the conformal sandy camo fatigues of the Sapin military. Rather something closer to the Belkan gears, such as her own.

Iskanda went out of the bushes in which she had arrived from her slightly stealthier route, and quietly crept forward. It was hard to be silent in woods where they were lots of small fallen tree parts, though, and as she was only a dozen meters behind the pilot, she broke the quietness of this place. Still she had the time to go into CQC range before the other pilot could draw his weapon. And to be honest, it wasn't her first reaction. Her because this pilot was a girl. The first reaction was surprise, and then followed by a very interrogative face. After all, Iskanda hadn't have the time to shorten her hairs since the first time she was shot down, her face was riddled with small scars due to insects when she had slept in the wood, and her gear was beyond recognition.

The other pilot, on the other side, was quite recognizable. Despite wearing an un-Sapin-like camo, she was bearing insignia of a Sapin squad. One she had already met and fight alongside. Now she understood who she was: the same Rafale pilot she had fought with above the Futuro canal, Marcela Vasquez aka "Espada 2". And that meant the J-35J she had wrecked and forced to flee was very likely her leader Espada 1.

"Vasquez." Iskanda said in a whistle, having drawn her jade harpoon, which was still stained by the blood of the Osean that she had slaughtered some days ago.

It wasn't through her face that Vasquez recognized the one pilot that she considered to be a sister-in-arms. But through her voice, this voice filled with anger that she had already used toward this Osean officer. Voice that had then turned to some cold neutral stance as they talk on their way back to their respective bases.

"Galm 1. Or should I call you Schwarze Luchs now?" The Sapin pilot asked, fearing a bit for her life at the sight of the blood-stained weapon. The dry blood had turned into a somewhat darker color.

"I don't know. Who I am does not matter. It's what I do." Iskanda answered quickly, before lunging forward at the Sapin, who stretch her arm to her gun, yet less quick. Iskanda slashed quickly at her holster, managing to wound her hand a bit. But this wound was insignificant by itself, it wasn't like when she had attacked that Osean pilot at Directus and ended up with the blade embedded in his palm. What was significant was the fact that she had caught the gun by its trigger guard. Then she pushed aside the slower Sapin pilot, before throwing aside the two weapons. The blade went into a nearby tree, with the gun still blocked in it.

"Evening the odds? I won't go easy on you!" Vasquez stood up with difficulty due to her leg injury. Each step was painful. And fighting against this bloodthirsty merc that hadn't hesitated a single bit to turn on her allies would not be painless. Yet she just did the same, even if she hadn't killed any allied pilot on her way to the Schayne Plains.

Vasquez tried to throw a punch at the Ustian face, but her attack was parried. She thought she could disturb the attention of her adversary by an uppercut as she had caught her punch and was apparently struggling to keep it in her left hand. But this attacked was blocked, and with irony, Iskanda claimed:

"This is not enough. It never was. And never will be."

Then she raised the two locked arms of the Sapin pilot, before forcing them to rotate in a swift motion, blocking her two arms. Incapable of freeing herself, and with her Ustian foe pushing on her weakened keg, she fell backward and with a punch of the Ustian accompanying her, much stronger than hers. She was hit below the chin, and felt the shock going through her skull with great pain, as her teeth hit themselves quite hard. Maybe she had fallen on some rocks or old root, or the fist of Iskanda had hit her with enough strength to get her K.O., because she lost consciousness, while hearing some laugh.

The laugh had come like it was needed for Iskanda. After all, she had just used Kupchenko's own justification of her failures against one other person. She had ended this day with a second victory, this time on the ground.

 **Schayne Plains, Belka, 05/06/1995, 16:30, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Iced water awoke her. Immediately, she shivered due to the sudden cold. Apparently, Iskanda had dragged her into a nearby creek, and was now pulling her out of the cold water, holding the Sapin pilot by her collar. As she saw the female pilot awakening, she released her. She was carrying her gun on her own holster and this strange harpoon around her neck. However, as she tried to stand once more but was hindered by her wounds, she noticed something: three small tree parts set tight by pieces of tissues and ivy were maintaining her ankle. Why was she caring about her? She was a dead weight in these woods, and her adversary above all. But maybe, maybe she didn't know they had defected for Kupchenko right now. This could mean why she wasn't willing to kill her right now.

"You're as cold sensitive as Pixy." Iskanda commented, giggling at the thought of the little souvenirs of her wingmate, while staring at her with a bit of disdain, which was coming of the pleasure she had from seeing a defeated adversary.

"Why did you help me? You could have let me die in these woods." Vasquez pointed out, having not expected such act. But unexpected acts were happening quite a lot those late days.

Iskanda sighted, having little interest in this pilot that had only survived because her Su-47 had been near obliteration due to Excalibur, then replied shortly:

"You're not my enemy, just a defeated adversary. I won't gain any pleasure at terminating you."

"Such compassion is almost unbearable." Vasquez replied with an amount of sarcasm equal to Iskanda's disdain.

"Don't try to be funny. It won't work. We should get to walk if we want to arrive to the Mausoleum tomorrow." Iskanda steered the talk toward more down-to-earth matters, not wanting to bicker for hours.

"It'll be hard for me to walk, you know." The Sapin pointed out, while pointing at her makeshift ankle brace. She was able to stand, but not to walk without aid or crutches.

"Then I'll help you. It won't be the first time I'm supporting an allied." Iskanda agreed to help the injured pilot on her way to the Mausoleum, this slightly reminding her of the time she had supported Pixy's plane with her own to help him refuel on Vasquez'.

This began the slow walk of the two female pilots toward the only safe place for both of them in the Schayne Plains, with the Erusean merc aiding the Sapin Pilot, who had laid an arm on Iskanda's shoulder line to have some support. Iskanda was almost feeling guilty, since she thought she had only shot down two allied pilots without warning them. But she wasn't feeling as much guilt as if she had killed Pixy or Crow 2 today. So, she was fine. Still, with what the war was becoming, her beliefs in the good of her cause she was once fighting for were only more shattered. Hopefully she had not met other allied units on the front today.

Vasquez was not much of a talkative lady either, hesitating heavily to say or not that she had attacked her on the CSB's behalf. Apparently, Iskanda did collaborate and fight alongside Kupchenko above B7R, she realized after connecting the dots: the allied GHQ had reported more than twenty losses due to a single pitch black Su-47. There weren't many pilots on either sides that were capable of such feet. And her little correction she was still feeling in her head due to the concussion wasn't paying in her favor, diminishing her envy to talk about her new allegiance.

They walk for a few hours on a steady pace despite the Sapin pilot's injuries. Iskanda and her former allied set their camp and a small fire at nightfall. The night wasn't that cold, but Vasquez gear had been pretty soaked when she awoke her by plunging her into a stream, so a bit of fire was needed. They both sat on each sides of the small fire, still staring angrily at each other despite that they just walk together for a few hours. Iskanda felt that she had only act out of compassion and necessity, not expecting anything from the Sapin. After all, it was her foolish act that had resulted in her injuries, when she could've just bail out after the first path. But why she would have stopped there was a question with only negative answers. In the end, it was Vasquez who broke the silence:

"Whose blood is on that weapon? It seemed recent to me." She said, as Iskanda was using its tip as a fingernail pick.

"Well, you have a bit of my biologic breeder, of two whoremongers, a few dozen Eruseans, and lastly five or six Oseans that some weakling sent after me." Iskanda counted with a very cold honesty, counting on her fingers as she was enumerating her victims and their nationality.

Vasquez didn't know what to reply in the first seconds. That a merc had quite a high killcount on the ground was impressive, even if she was supposed to blow her enemies sky high rather than close on the ground. What was less impressive was the first blood she quoted. Why does mercs had to have dark past filled with slaughter and madness? Then it was understandable why such people would revel in slaughtering people while laughing madly for some of them, including her interlocutor.

"Your mother?!" Vasquez repeated, with a bit of recoil after she realized how comfortable Iskanda was when she named her first bloodshed.

"I didn't hurt my breeder enough to kill her, though." Iskanda recalled her only regret on the Usean continent, emphasizing the term she used with disgust to talk about her biological parent.

The next minutes, Iskanda spent them explaining the event that led to her almost missed matricide. It took her a full ten minutes to calm down, while Vasquez was watching with fear, a bit of understanding and a bit of compassion. But no mercy. There was no need to feel mercy for a girl who would never show any. And the mad laugh filled the woods once more when she recalled how she disposed of these Oseans, mocking Weeker, when she had saved his fleet. She should have let this hypersonic missile hit his state-of the-art brand-new carrier and the weight of his ego would have been enough to sink the carrier.

Vasquez, on the other hand, recalled how the situation was in San Rudrigo, the Sapin capital city. Like Ustio, Sapin had taken a great number of losses in the first week of the war. Despite having recovered a bit of their hardware, and actually managing to keep it as they were untouched by the EMP disaster, the situation in Sapin was not that bright. Only some container-carriers that were shipping hardware between Sapin and Osea had been lost in this incident. Still, in both local headquarters, the euphory of the first week of the successful Reconquista had died down, replaced by resignation. And even with the Osean being quite present in San Rudrigo, there was whispers of hypothetical talks being set behind Osea's back between the small allied countries than Ustio and Sapin was, and the CSB. These three countries had nothing to gain by fighting one another, after all. The two allied had no more reasons to fight after all of their territories had been liberated.

But neither of them developed about their past. Iskanda knew that Vasquez had been part of aerobatic teams before the war and had thus less hours of actual combat than mercs or aggressor teams but could compensate well with agility. And outside of her bloody origin and fugitive nature, Vasquez knew little of her current aid. Only that if she said that she put to the blade a few dozen Eruseans, there was no reasons to doubt of her even more bloody origin. Then, why she had to enact such act of cruelty was out of her mind. The Sapin pilot found something to focus on other than these supposed slaughters: the state of her leader and partner, and as such, she was able to drift into slumber without too much of an issue. Iskanda, on the other hand, had to begin counting the star to fall into Morpheus's arms after counting the destroyed ships -because yes, counting sheep was way too much of a peaceful thing to the young Erusean merc-.

 **Unknown place, unknown country, Unknown realm, Unknown time, Weather: some clouds.**

To be honest, this time, the place was not fully unknown to her. Last time she looked at this place, it was from her plane, though. The lake was covered by hundreds of metallic pieces resulting from her use of FAEBs against the gunboats patrolling on it and was surrounded by ablaze wreckage of SAMs launchers and burning fighters such as Harriers and J-35Js. This was the lake at the South of the Schayne Plains. It just appeared to be bigger than seen from the skies. Or was it that the size of this piece of water had shrunk down through the years?

Maybe the time was not fully unknown to her either. If there was no burning SAMs in the vicinity, a lot of smoke could be seen from her point of view. A strange point of view it was indeed, as she was almost hovering above the place, like a specter in the ether. There was one moment in history where those Plains had been set ablaze before Excalibur stroke the allied armada.

"The battle of Burning plains that this priest told me about it when doing my tour of the cathedral." She realized what scene she was witnessing in front of her. This was after Ste Victoire's forces make explode their primitive devices, igniting the gas of the swamp, plunging their enemies -the Skin Hers and following them, the armies of North Belkan Lords- into hell.

But not all Skin Hers had vanished into oblivion. Some had managed to swim through the lake, their army being mainly a light cavalry. Thus, their lighter armor allowed them enough freedom of movement not to drown. Most of the survivors were immediately surrounded by some of the soldier following Ste Victoire, who had drawn and aimed crossbows at them, intimating them to surrender. Some refused and were pierced from one side to the other by crossbow bolts. Yet, their leader -named the Vulture, as well for his deadly behavior than for his very dark armor- had luckily not been encircled by crossbowers but by swordsman. He wasn't unarmed himself, having drawn a strange sword, with one cutting edge and the other filled with a raw of barbs. This was more of a barbaric weapon than flamberges and rapiers.

"A swordbreaker." Iskanda recognized the weapon, as the Vulture just parried the weapons of his enemy before breaking their blade with a single twist of his own. Though, some further away crossbows quickly come into the area, and began aiming at him with their weapon. His fate would be a quick one. He had survived hell, and this was his purgatory, he thought.

However, the helluva of bolts he was ready to receive never came, as the soldiers downed their weapon to let their leader come through, wearing a white tabard with the Ste Victoire cross in black surrounded by silver thread. She wore a simple mail below the tabard, like most of her soldiers. None of them had the means to buy plate armor, and due to the urgency of the critical situation they had been in, they hadn't had the time to craft such pieces of equipment on their own. She was carrying a falcon beak, and a short Belkan blade at her belt, a Katzbalger. Two weapons only meant to kill, and to kill violently, mostly used by Belkan mercenaries, far away from the regalia lance with double guard she was more than often represented with.

"Ich werde meinen Bruder vergelten." (I will avenge my brother) he exclaimed, pointing his weapon at the lady facing him sideway with her Lucerne high, ready to strike.

"Du wirst zur Hölle gesendet werden, wo du hingehörst." (you'll be sent to hell, where you belong) She replied not with a tone someone would not expect from a woman of her era, but more from a battle-hardened mercenary. Yet in these last month she had began to be closer of such warriors, having to fight a prolonged engagement of small bloody skirmishes.

And she lunged forward, forcing the Vulture to step aside, as his weapon was not meant to counter such short lances but swords. She was alternating high and low strikes, trying to throw the man she thought to be exhausted after having to swim across the lake off balance. But he was just stepping back again or parrying with his weapon, desperately trying to catch the tip of the falcon break between the metallic teeth of his swordbreaker.

This first part of their fight lasted for some minutes, with the Vulture being constantly outrange by the falcon beak, until he enacted some risky move. He deflected the tip of the falcon beak toward his shoulder plate. The tip itself didn't hit it, but the lateral blade, that was meant to pierce armor, ended up embedded into the plate, the mail and fabric below it and surely did more than grazing his shoulder skin. But it was worth the risk: his opponent was stopped in her assault, and as such, he was able to step aside and strike at the hands holding the blade with the cutting edge of his swordbreaker. The blade glided on the hand braces, but it hurt enough to lessen the hold on her falcon beak. Catching its hilt with the other hand -the one on the side in which the blade was stuck in his armor-, he was able to reorient the weapon toward the head of the woman he was facing, and she had to step down and let go of her weapon. Then, as she drew her Katzbalger, he tossed aside his wrecked shoulder blade and the now useless falcon beak.

"Jetzt sind wir fair." (now we are even) He claimed, even if he thought he had an edge. But his swordbreaker was mainly used to break rapiers and thine swords, while this Katzbalger was way thicker than the weapons of the nobles he would assassinate sometimes. This fight would not be as simple as he wanted it to be.

"Nicht wirklich. Kampf sind niemals fair. (Not really. Fights are never fair.) She retorted, parrying a low blow with a circling motion.

She was quite cautious in her engagement. She didn't know if her blade was strong enough to resist his swordbreaker. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. So, she tried to always make him parry with the cutting edge of his weapon, when he needed to deflect her strikes rather than purely blocking them. And even when he was striking back, she would parry with the large profile of his weapon, where the "teeth" of the swordbreaker had nothing to catch, due to the Katzbalger being quite a large but short sword.

This worked quite well for the first minutes as she had a bit of a strength advantage, due to the fact that she hadn't fight a single bit before this duel. Furthermore, his wound on his shoulder, that he gained a few minutes ago through her falcon beak was quite painful to say the least. As such, only his unharmed arm had enough strength and freedom of motion to keep up with this girl he had like many, if not all, underestimated today.

Besides, he knew that even if he killed her, it would be his undoing : her soldiers had created a circle around them, not bothering them in their duel a single bit, but ready to fire some bolts at him if he stroke their commander down. It was almost one of these so-called "honorable duel", but he doubted she would end him honorably, whether it would be through some traps, hidden fence, or by letting her mens pierced him from side to side.

The duel went on and on for a few minutes, with each trying to outmatch each other's fencing skill. He clearly had the experience on his side, which allowed him to keep up despite his injuries. He would parry by swift and precise motions, almost reading from her stance when and where she would strike. But he was not flawless, and when she was a bit more chaotic or creative, she managed to land some hits on him. And even if he tried to make them land on his plate armor, the energy of the blade was enough to damage his flesh beneath the armor. However, she lacked strength when their blades would be locked with one another's, since they were locked guard to guard, and always on his cutting edge. It was during one of these locking moments that he managed to punch her with his wounded arm.

Yet, the punch lacked enough energy to harm her enough, but the effects were enough for him. For once, it was her who was stepping back. And him, who would attack, turning the catching edge toward her sword. She succeeded at parrying the first blows with her sword turned, but as she tried to counter-attack as he was trying to find the best angle for how to deal a crucial blow, he finally caught her sword with his. Then twisted his own, expecting to break her weapon. The thick blade of the Katzbalger resisted the twisting motion, but not the arms of the one wielding it: as such, the blade was ripped from her hands, and throw aside. She was now vulnerable, he thought. He lunged forward with a loud growl, though she didn't step back. She only stepped forward.

He had aimed for the head. He was expecting her to lower it, not to charge at him. Again, this lady, that his employer depicted as some weakling still mourning her dead husband was quite the opposite. First, she had literally brought the Hell on earth by setting the swamps on fire. Then, she hadn't hesitated to go straight for him, when she could have left him to her crossbowers. And now this…

She almost succeeded in deflecting his thrusting motion, striking at his left wrist with her right one. Almost, because, if she had just avoided a killing blow, he had still hit her hard. The cutting edge of his blade glided on her chainmail coif, wounding her head skin. Even if it wasn't bleeding that much, it was enough to color her pale hair with a bloody tone.

"Ich werde mehr als eine neue Haarfarbe geben! (I will give you more than a new hair color!)" He claimed, ready to give another blow, hopping to end this fight and her life.

" Du hast nicht mir besiegt. Du hast eine solide Basis gegen den Todesstoß eingetauscht (You haven't beaten me. You have sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke)" She retorted harshly, and then he felt a small pain on his left side, as he turned to strike at her.

She hadn't stayed still as he almost scalped her. She had gone sideways as she was deflecting his blow with her right hand, and with her left one, had plunged a small dagger, a trident dagger to be precise, at her side, between the side plate and the forward one, taking advantage that the links between them had gone a bit loose due to his forced bath. He stopped his turning motion, as he felt the blade going slowly through his flesh, with her right arm having caught his left wrist. And slowly, very slowly, she whispered:

"Du kannst beim Versuch sterben. Oder mein Sieg akzeptieren. (you can die trying. Or accept my victory)."

She had said these words with her left hand ready to thrust her dagger even more into his body, where they would have maybe pierce through his lungs or his guts, she wasn't sure about his stature right now. He had no more room to try winning this fight. Only to ever die or live.

"Ich … gebe … auf…" (I surrender) He admitted with great reluctance that this fight was over. All his mens have been captured or killed in this battle. Most of them had been captured, while the heavier cavalry following them had suffered the worst from the still raging fire on the other side of the lake. For so many years he had been the bringer of death, and now that death was coming for him, he didn't know what to think. Nothing came to his mind but pure unexpectation.

"Was haben sie von hin gemacht (what did you do of him)?" Iskanda wondered in this kind of strange dream, daring to speak as the fight had now ended, with some soldiers bringing the Vulture toward some imprisonment or even some questioning area.

"Wir benutzten seine Macht, das ist klar (we used his power, of course)." The old self of Ste Victoire indicated, the one wielding her lance with her Ste Victoire cross and wearing silver plate armor, watching her younger self act, which was a bit weird as a situation, but dream had their fantasy, sometimes.

"Er erwachte Tod. Aber er überlebt. (he was waiting for death, but he survived)."

"I know history. But your past self is not really looking like the way they had drawn you on these great stained glasses." Iskanda pointed out, having seen more of a deadly and dread-bringing warrior that someone who would reach sanctity.

"Wenn du dich selbst zu mehr als nur einem Mann machst, wenn du dich einem Ideal hingibst und sie dich nicht aufhalten können, wirst du zu etwas ganz anderem - einer Legende (If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal and if they can't stop you, you become something else entirely - a legend), Frau Rayien." The lady beside her replied, in a philosophic manner, letting Iskanda guess that this was the way she would have to take if she wanted to be remembered.

"I was like you in my youth: a fearless warrior, closer to a warlord than a fair ruler, and to a demon than a hero. I killed for my beliefs. I lived for them. History made Ste Victoire. History that I chose not to write myself. But the print I created in the memories of the ones that fought alongside me or even against me for some was so strong that it changed what I had become. My name was sanctified not because of my direct actions, but rather what I inspired amongst my followers and adversaries." She continued, not considering herself to have lived the first decades of her life as a saint in any way. After, she did seek peace and justice, rather than pure victory. After, she understood her influence on the becoming of so many things.

"I do not expect to be beatified or sanctified anytime soon; you know. I will just keep fighting for now." Iskanda replied, wanting indeed to be remembered by the future generations to come, but not really ready to lay down her weapon in some seek of peace. Peace was a lie to her.

"Who was the Vulture, anyway? I mean, his origin?" Iskanda proposed a new topic of conversation, not wanting to talk about her recent action right now. Where they righteous or chivalrous? Of course, no. But stabbing a man to force him to surrender wasn't either.

"Well, to subvert a bit your expectation, he was not Belkan bred and raised. He came from what people could consider a peaceful origin at first. But this peace was based on lies. Lies that his father and his uncle refused to continue." The winged woman began recalling this man's story.

"What lies? About deaths, or great secrecies?"

"No. They were just astronomers and thinkers, and as such, they came to question the order of things, and not only on the astronomical scale. For their ideas, the Lord ruling this part of Emmeria had his entire family burned at the stake. He, as he was only considered too young to be sent in hell, was sent to float away in this area you're now calling the Razgriz Strait, I believe." Ste Victoire resumed the horror this man had gone through.

"I see. His relative send to warm Hell, and him to cold Hell. Continue." She wanted to see how far this man had gone to understand how he could have come to these practices as a Skin Hers.

"He was rescued by Nordennavikian sailors. Then he went through the icecap toward Wellow, and finally Belka. All this ice had not cooled his burning passion. Therefore, he would often finish his skinned victims by burning them half-alive. He was enacting vengeance, but without any limit. Until my younger self stopped him." Her interlocutress finally disclosed the origins of the man that would become her most trusted lieutenant, as she managed to steered the power of his rage toward their common enemies : the Nord Belkan nobles, who killed her husband and sent him to his death, even if they sent one of their army instead of all the Vulture's forces.

"But now I know what's bothering you. You're asking yourself who you are in this renewed version of history? Are you the Victorious one -my name before people sanctified me- or the Vulture?" Victoire was quicker than her own thoughts, which was again some weird thing to witness, if all of this was happening inside her own spirit.

"Yes." She admitted she didn't know her role in all of that.

"Like I said, your future is yours, and yours only. The Vulture of your era has already a name. And already as much blood on his hands as the one of my eras. But there was no tactician in my era. Besides, you might get the chance of undoing my mistakes. I left the chain of command to soon, not wanting to fight for my entire life. Would the word be different if I continued my fights? It might have been." The old lady of the past gave her a cryptic answer that Pixy would see right through it, but she still had some issues solving such riddles.

"Then I will keep fighting. Until when I don't know." Iskanda claimed, ready to face whatever the universe would throw at her.

"In time, you might become someone like me if you go on this path. Someone to be remembered, feared, and maybe honored by the generations to come. And maybe they will one day look for your guidance like you do now." Ste Victoire gave her another seeds of hope in his spirits, hopes of a better life and a better world to live in, worthy fighting for.

"But, I mean, this is happening inside my head? How could I do the same?" Iskanda inquired the old woman, her logic not assimilating such possibility.

"Of course, it's within your spirit. But isn't it real?" Ste Victoire tried to put some end to the growing headache within Iskanda's spirit.

"Everything's possible for someone with enough will." Iskanda concluded about the possibility of such events to occur.

"Still, you're not wondering why I showed you all of this?" Victoire asked, lengthening the conversation Iskanda actually wanted to end to have some relieving sleep.

"Well, the show was quite nice to see. Next time, maybe on the other side of this lake, it would be even nicer for me to see these people being incinerated by your medieval FAEBs." Iskanda chose to giggle at the thought of such destruction brought to poor riders and soldiers. But even entrenched bunkers would fall to that, so the historical disparities seemed futile to her.

"Uh, no. More to warn you that your next battle might be close and personal, instead of from a few kilometers onboard your futuristic rides." Ste Victoire sighted, having to resist the envy to facepalm herself due to the speech of Iskanda.

"That's nice for the warning. I wouldn't miss the opportunity to have some more blood types on my blade." Iskanda took the warning pretty well, expressing her joy about such close engagement with a sly grin on her face.

"Do not use only one blade. Especially if you're outnumbered." She gave the Erusean merc some advices, as their surroundings were slowly fading away. This dream was about to end.

"Thanks for the tip. I will welcome whatever challenge I'll have to face. And overcome it." Iskanda swore to the old lady, her sly grin having vanished to display a more determined face. This part of the Schayne Plains was fading away, only to be replaced by some other part she would see once more when she would awake. She had had a little hint on a very violent near future. Some people would fear such event. But not her. She would go toe to toe with whatever enemies who would cross her path to victory, like Ste Victoire did in her era. Victory for who, people might wonder? For herself only.

Schayne Plains, Belka, 06/06/1995, 16:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.

The morning has been quite peaceful. Iskanda hadn't asked the Sapin about her allegiance, and Vasquez hadn't either. Iskanda was quite suspicious that she wasn't part of the allied forces, rather something else. Yet, herself was no more part of it since she decided to fly as "Schwarze Luchs" and not as "Galm 1".

The walk toward the Mausoleum had been at a steady pace, despite Vasquez' injuries. Hopefully, they had bailed-out not that far away from this place. Iskanda had vaguely explained where they were heading to, saying that it was some kind of old outpost of the Belkan air force, where she had found this abandoned fighter. Of course, the Sapin pilot had been quite doubtful and these mere explanations were not enough for her, but she would have to trust each other until their arrival there. Right now, there had the nearby stream in their field of sight, which meant they only had to walk for a few dozen minutes until their long-awaited pause. Besides, they were pretty weak from this forced march.

No plane crossing the sonic barrier was heard during their walk, and not even a single engine above them. After all, this territory was inside Excalibur's range, and no matter how stealthy the Osean planes would be, Iskanda doubted they could hide from the pseudo-satellite of the Merlin network, especially after having seen them capable of localizing F-35s in a matter of seconds. However, fire from Excalibur could be seen, or at least witnessed through the bit of turquoise glittering in the high skies, even in broad daylight.

One of the only topics of peaceful conversation they managed to have was the becoming of Espada 1. Vasquez was showing enough worry to make Iskanda understand these two were not only wingmates, but mates overall. Iskanda couldn't help but share a bit of guilt. After all, she was still wondering if this last engagement had been solely due to her aircraft having lost his coms, or if they had acted on purpose, following some last order from either the allies or their new allegiance. Though, there was something she said that brought a bit of hope to the Sapin pilot : her leader had been able to retreat out of the area of operation, and even if his aircraft was a bit unstable then, it could only mean that Espada 1's likelihood of survival was quite high.

Iskanda didn't mentioned the strange dream she had had this night. After all, this little bit of guidance was not meant for anyone but herself. And she wanted to keep to herself her little hints on her future fights.

 **Mausoleum, Belka, 06/06/1995, 18:30, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Vasquez expected many things when they arrived at the bunker after drinking a bit of the water pouring from the small cliffside. To be ambushed by some unknown forces was one of them, whether they would be South or North Belkan or even some infiltrated allies. Though she had ruled out the last, knowing what was roaming in this area, and what was the true reason for her to wear Belkan-like gear. Official explanation was that it was meant to deceive Belkan soldiers if they ever met one. Of course, such explanation would not convince Iskanda if she ever asked for it. Yet she had not asked, which could either meant she had already figured everything out, or that she hadn't. But giving that she was quite a smartass to be able to fly a Su-47 on her first try and survive B7R with it, she had to root for the first.

What really and simply happened was the greetings from an old man that had chosen not to cut his beard, but only to brush it, like some hermits living in loneliness. It took the Sapin pilots several minutes to recognize the man she had known as the Belkan pilot that had almost single-handedly ended the war between Belka and Recta. Now he was more known as a legend that the man he really was, with the Belkan army having created some invulnerability myths around him and his students. Myths that Pixy had reduced to dust during the first battle axe operation. Or maybe increased in some way, since Pixy was a student of the said man.

"Do not stay outside, the wind can be quite cold in those summer evenings." The old man invited her inside the bunker which metallic doors laid wide open, after Iskanda had already entered in. Both shared some Belkans words the Sapin didn't understand due to her lack of knowledge in this tongue and them being already inside. Even if their talk wasn't a high-leveled one.

"Wie war's (how was it)" Kellerman asked to Iskanda, having first hoped to see her come back in the Berkut. He had ceased waiting yesterday evening, due to the low autonomy of the Berkut.

"Gut, aber Überraschungsvoll (good, but full of surprises)." She replied shortly, with the discovery of Kupchenko's secession being quite a big one, and if this one a big one, Schwarze turning his coat in hopes of a better future was a one big enough to include Excalibur inside.

"Ich anerkenne. Es musste eines Höllischen. (I agree. it must've been one hell of a surprise)." The old Belkan pilot recognized that he had never foreseen this war would change so much. The last time he talked with Kupchenko, it was before this war even started. Has he already planned everything back then?

Still, the two tired pilots were not that much in the mood for talks about Kupchenko's strategy right now. Dietrich needn't to ask anything to know they were exhausted from their walk. He had seen a small flash a bit low in the sky when their aircraft had exploded after some mid-air collision, and from what he could deduce, it was quite far, especially for someone travelling by foot. He had set up some table in the bunker, and ready some meal, having used his free time from yesterday and this morning to visit one or two farmers he knew in the vicinity.

Why did he know them, the answer was simple, he responded to the two pilots as they were more than happy to have something more to eat than savage strawberries and other edible wild berries. He had now sought for some years to retire from the military and live here, in the agricultural plains of the South. When the military had asked back him into service, which he accepted by sense of duty toward his country, he was already looking to buy some farm he could restore with some older students. Right now, his dreams of living peacefully in this area were a bit set aside due to the fight above their heads, even if such fights were only taking mere seconds to end due to Excalibur firepower. Besides, these elders' students that had wanted to retire had also gone back into active duty and were for most of them dead. The glorious victors of the Belkano-Rectan war had all died but him.

He didn't dwell on their deaths, knowing that they must have gone bravely, not like these new Rald-Regiment the new government had created recently, filling their ranks with rather inexperienced pilots that would compensate by their links in politics. He despised such types of student as much as Kupchenko did too. These couldn't understand well the rules of combat. As such, he wasn't surprised a single bit when Iskanda told him that the Grabacr, Ofnir and Svafnir team had been destroyed above B7R, with the Grabacr team being solely taken out by Pixy. From his point of view, Pixy had more honor than these RR pilots. After all, it was the quest of honor that made the person honorable, and not any other way around.

Still, he was definitely settled on living in the fields. But not anymore in those were battle were fought. He had fought for long enough. He had been a hero once. But he didn't want to keep fighting until he stained his hands with so much blood that history would only look at him as a villain.

Both pilots weren't very talkative: this was understandable, again. They spent half of the dinner yawning, and as such, were too tired to go stargazing. He wasn't, and as he looked some hours later at the somewhat peaceful immensity of space, he wondered what Kupchenko, his old friend, was up to. Something terrifically ingenuous to end the war was an obvious answer, but he had a bad feeling about it. A bat feeling toward both of the pilots that were spending the night here. What would happen to them would be their choice, but he could still help them ease whatever effects they could cause, if they agreed to listen. After all, it was best for them if they wanted to live. Because it's only when we cease to listen to life that we grow still and die. He hoped none of them would

 **Tauberg, Belka, 06/06/1995, 20:00, Weather: heavy cloud coverage, risk of thunder.**

Already one day had passed. One day had passed since the Schwarze team yield before him. He had bargained quite a lot there. But it was worth the risk, both on the matter of pure military assets and psychological warfare. Besides, North Belka would not be able to prevent further runners to join the CSB, with the loss of their main deserter hunter squad. They would have to rely on non-Belkan foreign mercs, since few Belkans, even mercs, hadn't issue with shooting down runners.

However, a second event had happened yesterday. One that had shaken his whole scheme for the end of this war. Two Morgans had been shot down. The pinnacle of Belkan technology had shown weakness, yet to another slightly older pinnacle. At least they hadn't been shot down by some Oseans or Yukte planes. In these cases, Kupchenko would've been worried. He had one last contingency he needed to deal with. She had already shaken his train of schemes once: by making him realize they could be seen as saviors rather than terrorists.

She had shown to be able to go to great extent to get what she wanted, even if he wasn't sure the only mark, she left on him was what she wanted truly. A single glance at the very bullet mark left by her sniper shot on his shoulder made him thought to this very singular person once more. She definitely had potential, he had to give credit where it was due. She was one of these pawns that had appeared to be common at the beginning of the match, and now, at the end, she might get promoted to something higher than a single pawn.

However, all of this intern turmoil about this adversary went to an end rather quickly, as he had quite urgent matter to tackle. He had managed to get some links through the embassy whose staff had chosen to join the CSB : quite a lot had chosen by themselves, and in the majority of the other ones, the embassy safety forces he had slowly gotten an hidden control through the years had submitted some head-strong North Belkan loyalists. Yet some hadn't joined him, but these were in faraway countries, with little to no interest in this war. Above all, all embassy of the countries involved directly or indirectly in the Belkan war had fallen within his grasp. This was what had been reported to him this afternoon. Now, the true war, this war in the shadow of the politics could begin.

Despite their best efforts to unite the countries born out of South-West Belkan secession against Belka in this war, Osea had failed to fully control his supposedly puppets state. Ustio and Sapin were no longer to be counted amongst the warring parties, due to their initial losses they had never fully recovered. Besides, what they had recovered had been destroyed by Excalibur in the case of Directus' brand-new airport. Yet, this had not caused great Ustian ire, as unlike the EMP disaster, the numbers of civilian losses had been almost insignificant, with most of the dead being Oseans and Yukte operating the airport during the strikes. Facto was still under the leash of North Belka despite the Rald Partei losing more and more power, but they might have promised them some South Belka territories, or other foolish things. Gebet and Recta were still left. Once a powerful nation, they had been conquered by the principality after their aerial defeat due to the Silber squadron. Osea had played on the dissension that were born under their Belkan era, which existed between the ones that accepted this Anschluss and the other that didn't. Belka hadn't managed the ethnizes he had conquered, Kupchenko admitted. This had happened for many conquerors: Belkans, Eruseans, Yuktes and Emmerians had at some point encountered this very problem. Still, with their army led by generals corrupted by Osea, they had been defeated in the opening weeks of this conflict and gone neutral since. The only reported skirmish had been between the two countries and not between them and Belka, with one blaming their defeat on the other. The few clear officials wanted only unity between the community once more, to enter into the twenty-first century as a strong nation and not as two war-torn rivals.

Of course, Kupchenko wasn't expecting any hidden peace negotiations coming from either Osea or Yuktobannia. Both had been hurt in their pride, wealth and population to a level that neither of both would seek peace. He had some schemes for them. Schemes that had still a few contingencies to tackle, but they would be enacted when the time would be right, without the shadow of a doubt.

And, from the closest to the furthest, the countries he was trying to reach was Wieldwakia, to ensure they stopped providing fuel to North Belka, Nordlands and Wellow to gain some political local support, Leasath to make stop the weapon delivery, and many other nations to have their support for him and not for Osea, with the nations threatened by the Ulysses fragment being the first : Erusea and the Eastern nation of Usea -since the Western were already bound to Osea by some not that secret treaties-, Aurelia and the three Annean countries. All would be useful in times, and he knew they would have to honor the debt in human losses he was going to create for the world's interest and his own.

Suddenly, a message was transmitted from the Datenverwaltungsektion (data management division). Actually, it was a double transmission, as the message was displayed both in encrypted and in deciphered version, showing which code had been used there. Of course, it was only displaying that some of the allied countries were willing to talk for peace. Still, it wasn't the message himself that startled Hellenseite, which was also sat on a nearby chair, and had already figured the encryption:

" Sie benutzen noch die Rubiks Kode (they're still using the Rubik's code)." He pointed out, even if he knew to who they had given this code to use, initially.

"Eigentlich. Hier ist die wichtigste Nachrichte dieses Krieges: eine Kerze genug ist, um die Feuer zu starten, deren die Alliierten niederbrennen werden. (Indeed. Here is the most important message of this war: a candle is enough to start the fire that will burn the allies to the ground)." Kupchenko replied with a sly smile, knowing from who he was speaking too. From one of his closest allied, to be precise.

"Alles läuft wie geplant, mein Freund. (Everything is proceeding as planned, my friend.)" Hellenseite added, as the schemes they had long foreseen were slowly set into action.

"Noch nicht alles. Aber es wird bald (not all yet. But soon it'll)" Kupchenko didn't agree they could celebrate their achievements right now. He had agreed to celebrate only after this war ends. And only after it really ends, definitively.

 **Mausoleum, Belka, 07/06/1995, 09:30, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

The Su-25 was ready for take-off on the launching system. The old ground striker. Dietrich and Iskanda had no wish to follow her on her way back to Sapin. On one hand, Kellermann's reasons were simple. He had made clear, crystal clear even, that his fighting days were over, and these reasons seemed enough to Vasquez. On the other hand, Iskanda's were more nebulous:

"I cannot rejoin the allied forces after what I've done. Besides, I want to choose my fights. I am at my best when I'm not in chain." She expressed her will of freedom as Vasquez was standing right to the ladder.

"I see. I know you won't stop fighting. You've a greater fighting spirit than I do." Vasquez recognized she was outmatched both in the air and on the ground. Especially by taking into consideration the fact that she fought her with a very badly damaged unstable aircraft.

"Good Luck, then." Iskanda replied shortly.

"You might need some too." Vasquez reciprocated her wishes, as she was climbing on the ladder to the Su-25's cockpit.

"I don't need luck. I have strength. And it's enough." Iskanda dismissed the idea that she wasn't the full master of her own fate.

With this last answer, their conversation was over, and Iskanda took a few steps toward the control panel were Kellermann was busy readying the catapult system. It was quite a modern system, which she hadn't seen the first time as the cabinet containing it had only been opened after Kellermann landed a short week ago. One of the gauges suddenly increased following the small hand gesture of Vasquez, indicating her readiness. It was the pressure gauge, and some seconds later, the gauge reached its peak and the Sukhoi was propelled by the formidable induced thrust.

"She might need luck, wherever she's going." Kellermann broke the silence, as the plane was now far enough to have understandable talks.

"It's not a mystery to me. She's joining her new master." Iskanda asserted, having noticed the plane hadn't made any U-turn toward the allied frontline, and was skimming full North instead. This could mean only one thing.

"How did you figure that out?" Kellermann asked, wanting to know if she had thought about the same specific points. Because, let's face it, the old pilot had figured the change of allegiance of the Sapin pilot the first day. First, she hadn't tried to lecture Iskanda on her choice to fight the allied forces, which had caused disastrous event. Speaking with her about this glaring defeat didn't seem to bother her either.

"First, her flight lead retreated to the North, where I wouldn't have if my plane was a badly damaged J-35J. Second, she was wearing a Belkan-like uniform instead of their more Sapin-like. She said it was to deceive Belkan patrols, but I think it was to deceive something else…" Iskanda begin her explanation, which Kellermann completed.

" The conditioned wolves. This explain why none had approached you two during your second little Wanderung from your crash site to here."

"Exactly. I hope for her that her flight lead is fine." Iskanda added, hesitating to qualify what was her feeling toward this act.

"Is it guilt that I'm hearing in your voice? Kellermann inquired, not expecting some merciless merci to feel any.

"No, it isn't. Just a bit of compassion." She clarified, having felt and still feeling some worries about her missing admiral for example.

Due to Excalibur firing at a regular pace on the far away Ulysses part, stargazing was not an evening activity that they could do these nights. The powerful blast of energy was blanketing the sky, shadowing every star, even the brightest such as Sirius and Vega. Iskanda was sure that simple solar panels were not enough to power such energetic marvel. What was powering Excalibur, she has no idea. She try to think about the topic with Kellermann, but he asserted that no nuclear fission reactor were providing the energy to this weapon, due to the output of such kind of generators being hard to control, while the energetic discharges seemed to be highly accurate and finely calculated. If Osea had discovered what was powering it, they would surely try to bomb or sabotage it. But since Excalibur was still firing, without any issues, it could only mean the Osean were powerless again such weapon, once again. And with the Schwarze team added to its defensive forces, the weapon was definitely unassailable.

She thought to her latest fight above it. She had come to realize, after she hopefully, but of foolish hope thought it was wrong, that she wouldn't be able to damage it with any plane existing in this world. Even the ADFX-01 would not bear the defensive laser fire much more time than her aircraft did. Yet, she wanted to obtain victories once more. She was free and had tasted victory once more. She needed to feel this sweet feeling of sick joy once again. But in which battlefield, she had no idea right now. Still, she was hoping to stay within the memory of mens after this war. And she would do everything to achieve this goal. She had already killed a few dozen allied soldiers and pilots. Killing a few more, even a few hundreds or thousands more was not frightening her a single bit...

 **So, one little filler chapter ended. I try to do a more down-to-earth battle scene, instead of setting it into the sky. After all, I have already made Iskanda ramboing a bit against those pesky Oseans. Does that mean she we'll have some close-range fight soon? There will be, rest assured. I did debunked my own story of Ste Victoire a bit, after all it was her memory that marked this earth, and besides, people are rarely sanctified or beatified when they are alive (I don't know any example). Jedi are named guardians of peace, but to guard peace is to go to war against those who threatens it… It's a little pause between the end of the canonical story and the true beginning of the end… Or the beginning of a new world...**

 **Feel free to comment, subscribe, favor… Und bis nächst mal, Lesern.**


	21. Erklärungen

**Tauberg, Belka, 07/06/1995, 10:00, Weather: outcast, risk of thunder.**

The Su-25 was slowly approaching the airspace of the Belkan Wunderwaffe. She obviously knew they had been tracking her since she entered the airspace or even before, when she took off maybe. They didn't send any notice yet, but they might soon, she guessed. She had never seen the dark building towering over the Tau. Only heard stories and saw the few pictures taken by the onboard cams of the very scarce survivors amongst the allied pilots that launch raids on them. These could be counted on a slightly severed hand. As such, she was struck by the sheer size of the one-kilometer high chemical laser from her windshield, even from a near dozen kilometers away.

The expected notice came quickly, but not under the form she would have wanted. Its form was the locked alarm. Some radar was tracking her at an unknown location, while she was almost above one of the destroyed jammers. Still, there was active jamming around Excalibur, as she wasn't able to get a single reading on it, and as such couldn't see who was tracking her. Though she could deduce it a bit from the distance, with no IFF in the close vicinity, that she was either tracked by some long range SAMs, or any aerial platform bearing ERAAMs. It had been reported that the DW-2s were in possession of such capacities and were used by the CSB as AAMs interdiction platform. Coupled with the Merlin satellites, such network could, would and should eradicate any allied opposing force, even if including latest generation stealth fighters.

The lock was confirmed a few seconds later, while she blinked her eyes to try seeing the pitch black shape of the DW-2s. One was indeed hovering a few kilometers away from the dark tower. From the trail she could see north of Excalibur, two MiG-31s had just taken off for interception purposes.

"Schwarze Falke 3 zu Kontrolle. Eindringling verschlossen. Feuerbereit. (dark falcon 3 to control, intruder locked, ready to fire)." The Belkan ERAAM operator onboard the said DW-3 announced, ready to fire at this insignificant target of the fighter that this Su-25 was. They had shot down Osean F-35s and Yukte Su-32s with ease, after all, and it was enough to have their confidence in the might of their weaponry set high enough.

For a few seconds, the blaring alarm was all that the Sapin pilot could hear, quite afraid that such weapon would terminate her. It would be a shame, to get shot down by her new allies due to misunderstanding.

"Nicht schießen. Identität, bitte. (hold your fire. Identification, please) " A cold and Yukte-sounding voice interrupted the interception, curious to who could be in the seat of this old Su-25. Which was supposed to rest in his Mosauleum like his old Su-47, but apparently people didn't authorize rest nowadays.

"Huh, what did you say? No Hablo Belkanès (I don't know Belkan)." She admitted she had not a great knowledge of this language, unlike her leader.

"Gault 7, your compatriots seemed to have survived. Welcome at Tauberg, Marcela Vasquez. Landeklar, you're clear to land." Kupchenko was allowing her to land, and with these words the locked alarm stop blaring into her cockpit. Still, he only her to do saw after having had her voice recognized twice through a specific software and verifying that this Su-25 was indeed the one he let to rest in his Mausoleum. He had made his maiden flight onboard this attack fighter, decade ago.

Appeased by this news, Vasquez bypassed the dark tower, keeping her pace toward the runway. Kupchenko was trusting this Sapin pilot enough to let her land unharmed. After all, even if such defectors remained loyal to the allied forces and try to go rogue against the CSB, they would be shot down by either the DW-3s, the nearby SAMs, the gargantuan amount of tactical laser systems on and surrounding Excalibur, and since a few days, the Schwarze squadron was amongst the defenses of the Sword of Kings as well.

"Entendido. Lowering gear." The Sapin pilot said, as she was about to engage herself in the axis of descent toward the two-part runway, going on the east one, while the MiG-31s were following her close.

Her landing was a short one, with the tarmac being in good state in spite of the constant attacks they were facing from the allied forces. Shortly after, the two red and black MiG-31s landed, then the DW-3s proceeded to do a vertical landing at the Southern industrial zone of Tauberg. This one had suffered most of the damage when the Ustian and Osean mercenary squadrons had attacked a few weeks ago, but now all had been fixed. It was under the protection of five RTLSs dispersed in this area than the DW-3s landed into a small hemispheric hangar, which was sealed soon after by harden duraluminium plating which glided from the four edged to meet in the center.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 07/06/1995, 10:20, Weather: outcast, risk of thunder.**

After some other checking of her identity, and while the old Su-25 was towed toward a hangar to rest permanently, Vasquez was finally sent to meet with Kupchenko, accompanied by Gault 7, Fernando Perez, her only compatriot in the vicinity outside of her leader. She stepped onboard a little electric railcar which carries her from the aerial base to the main compound, due to the two being separated by a few kilometers. They seemed quite close from the skies, but not that much on the ground. Then, the railcar went below the ground, as they were closing to the ring of hills surrounding the king of swords. For a few minutes, it made its ways amongst underground corridors, from which she could see through some bay underground facilities, where something big was being built, apparently. One of the building halls they crossed on a glassed catwalk was more than eight hundred meters long and almost the same in length, and quite high.

Still, the secrecy of these projects was none of her concerns as she was taken to upper levels, which if her measurements of distance were correct, were inside of the tower itself. They had to use multiple lifts, as there wasn't a single lift to avoid the possibility of planes going right through its shaft, but an array of them going to different speed and different sectors of the facility, where they would cross the path of both guards on patrol and scientist and technicians going from one room to another in their respective white or grey lab coats.

She reached her destination, which was a small room. The next room was called Meinungsausbildungsraum, again an incomprehensive Belkan word to her. From the bay window, she could deduce they were in the southern side of the hemicylindrical lower part of Excalibur, near some diagonal support array.

"Against, my warmest welcome amongst us, Miss Vasquez." A man with brown hair and small cold grey eyes spoke, with her voice having an undiscussable chilling tone. The tone of commandment was much more present when talking to him face to face than when hearing him on the radio, he knew it full well, and was using it at his advantage. He then invited them to take a seat in front of his desk, after having made slide the computer screen into the metallic piece of furniture and sat on his own chair, a curious one, where he was not sat but kneeled, without back support. The seller had said it was better for his back, since it forced the user to stand right.

"I won't go ten thousand ways. ¿Como esta mi líder (how is my leader)?" The Sapin pilot asked, still feeling worried about her leader she hadn't heard of from anyone here yet. They would have surely said something if he was dead, but she was still deeply worried about him.

" I know a bit of your mother tongue from your colleague at your side here. I can show you his current state." Kupchenko responded politely, having understood the worries of Vasquez from both her words and her non-verbal communication.

"Bueno. Where are we going?" She was about to leave to check his condition when Kupchenko caught a small remote control on his desk and pointing on the bay window behind him. The landscape became blurry, only to reveal what looked like an hospital chamber, with Vasquez' leader bedridden in it, with an IV cannula in his right hand, pulse control in his left, and a respiratory support system set on his face.

"This bay window is only a high definition screen that most of the time display the landscape using optic fiber. But it can be used as computer screen sometimes." Kupchenko explained, letting the Sapin pilot ask the oblivious question:

"lo que paso? I mean, what's happened to him?" She asked with renewed worries.

"His J-35J had sustained extensive damage in the rear section, and thus he had to bail out above the runway. But not only the fighter had sustained damage, his body did, and the high-G induced by the ejection rocket hadn't help. He's in induced comatose for the time that his injuries heal." He recalled how the event unfolded two days ago.

"Will he suffer consequences?"

"You must understand that the vertical acceleration almost snapped his spine." Kupchenko specified the injuries of her leader, which left her speechless.

"Maldita." She swore, feeling the unluckiest person in the world, after she considered herself to be lucky enough to have survived an encounter with Schwarze Luchs.

"He might become tetraplegic, but the exoskeleton projekt is near completion, and should be compatible for flight with minimal losses in reaction time." Perez tried to show her the bright side of the events: he might be able to fly again through the miracles of modern technology.

"That's nice." She admitted that this was making her feel a bit unluckier. Still, having technology being able to make him fly again would not make him fly again right away. Human spirit and body could both be broken and maybe it would need a bit more time than reducing a fracture required.

"Perez will guide you to his room. However, before you go, I want you to tell me what's happened with Iskanda Rayien. I know she discovered the Mausoleum and use my own fighter two days before, and that she had gifted you this Su-25." Kupchenko gaze went to friendly to inquisitive, as he inquired the Sapin pilot about these short moments shared with the Erusean-Ustian mercenary, what she had learned from her and her motives.

So, she told him everything Iskanda had recalled her. Her origin was not much of a mystery for the Yukte-originated tactician. He had already used his agents in Erusea to get some intel, and due to their respective positioning in l'École de l'Air of Farbanti and the local armies alike. He found a darker origin that he was expecting, but this last decade had not been the brighter for the Usean continent as a whole. To be honest he knew more about her origins and what had caused her to flee from Farbanti than the young Sapin pilot, and maybe than the concerned person herself.

Then she recalled another event, that could bring some explanation for why Iskanda Rayien accepted with full compliance, if not joy and pleasure to fight and hunt down allied pilots over the battlefield. This weakling that admiral Weeker was had sentenced her to death, but maybe in doing so he only sent his own soldiers to die. She might be seeking vengeance after this very man. And he would be more than happy to provide her anything she needed to enact her vengeance.

In light of these new news, the dissensions into the allied forces ran deeper than he hoped. Because he could work on these dissensions, to turn allied against each other's, or to turn adversaries into allies. Indeed, if enemies deserved nothing but too be dealt with and wiped out, adversaries could sometimes come to an understanding. Understanding that they are seeking the same things, from other points of views, and that fighting one another is insignificant. Understanding that they could join forces to achieve their common goal. He had already succeeded in turning Zukov, after all.

He now needed to give her a final message before he could let her go join with her leader. He had deduced they had some attachments above the level of the relationship between leader and wingman from her sincere worries, but it didn't matter to him, as long as it didn't affect each other's performances. And maybe these attachments would make her less likely to accept the task he was going to ask her to undergo, but in the end it was a necessary doing.

"Well, I have one final matter to discuss with you here."

Vasquez nodded with a little head gesture and he kept talking.

"You might know that we are evacuating industries from Hoffnung. You might have even seen them partially during your way toward my office. But not all has been evacuated right now. I have full control of the weapon industries, and their full compliance. But there's another industry where I don't have full control, and I believe you might help guarantee the success of the technology transfer by being my eyes and hears there, as one of the lead engineer in this technology is one of your compatriot. Perez had less credit than you for him, as he had left Sapin for too long. Do you agree?"

Vasquez was left a bit unphased. The determined tone in Kupchenko's voice was making it quite hard for her to think to say "no". She was now wondering how Iskanda could have refused to simply join him two days ago and put up this desperate fight. Sure, there could be risk in this assignment, but nothing seemed to be riskier than having to fight this merc another time. As such, her answer was oblivious, and was the one Kupchenko expected.

"voy a hacer esto (I will do this). But I want guarantee that I won't have to fight Schwarze Luchs once more." The Sapin pilot agreed, still marked by her fight. She had though they were equals when they fought side by side at the retaking of Futuro Canal. There she had already seen her performances, and her willpower. She had attributed that to her admiral that had spoken up for her, but even alone she was a formidable opponent. One she didn't want to fight ever again, or she may have something worse than a sprained ankle.

"Good. Be assured, you won't have to fight her as long as everything run as planned Of course you won't leave just right now. Maybe in two or three days, if I don't manage to negotiate directly. You may proceed, Perez." Kupchenko answered the doubt of the Sapin pilot, even if he spotted a little distrust in her mood. Was it distrust, or mistrust? The lines between the two was rather thine anyway.

After the two of them left, the screen behind his desk glided vertically, revealing a small corridor that linked to the Meinungsausbildungsraum of Hellenseite. And the latter stood there, with a bit more of doubt that the Sapin had displayed. Which was rather rare, given Hellenseite cold and introvert nature. It wasn't long before he expressed his true mind on the true goal of this operation:

"You're sending her blind. You're expecting many things to happen here. Way too many things to be in the six-sigma interval. Where is the man that had planned our uprising for months and figured every contingency before this war?" He tried to explain how Kupchenko's planning had went so chaotic since he had been hit by this cyanide bullet. The Arzt (medics) had fully treated him, but this now left him with worries for his friend.

"I acknowledge that fact. But we don't need everything going as plan with a 99.74 percent rate (the six-sigma interval). We need to take the chaotic nature of some people now involved in the equation." Kupchenko retorted, wanting to diminish the doubt of his friend. He could have sent him instead, as he knew well the lead engineer, but he didn't want him to take the risks.

"Although chaos can be beautiful, it cannot last." Hellenseite quoted, preferring methodical approach to issues they needed to tackle rather than empirical ones. Empiricism was based on what could be, but it also included all that could not be. And Hellenseite definitively wanted that their victory was in the would be and even in the should be. Yet, how many events that will led to this victory were still laying in the unknown, he couldn't have a grasp on anything regarding that matter.

"It won't last indeed. But we need this chaos in our game if we wanted to have the balance of power in our side, entropy aside or not. Besides, we still have some 4 members to add to our little festivities" Kupchenko ended their talk while steering it into another direction. These protagonist of his little conquer game could change many things, more or less than the chaotic variable. Or maybe they could bring as much change, but he would have to do a few calls before. One candle had been matched. Now he needed to light up the whole chandelier, and then these members would see things better than hidden in the dark like they were right now.

Two days later, a DW-2 would bring Vasquez to Hoffnung, escorted on their way by some members of Schwarze team. The travel was quite calm, with the few patrolling aircraft preferring to look around and not engage anything. Some Flankers did try to engage them at some point, but a Helligen Kolumne trashed their SAAMs, and the ERAAMs of all aircraft decimated the enemy squadron - all MiG-31 had been modified to bear this weapon -. Their other modification allowed them to carry some ATGMs containing Hypersthene, and vectored nozzles. Kupchenko had based these redesigns on the MiG-31X/V of some mercenary he once saw fighting against the future Solo Wing Pixy.

Yet, Vasquez had no idea to where she would end up. Negotiations would be fine, she hoped. Her only wishes was that she wouldn't have to indulge in aggressive negotiations. So far, nothing unforeseen happened. But she had been sent for more reasons than she knew, and as such, was facing much risks than she knew for this reason. What was the danger, she didn't know. Danger would cause risks, and risks hazards. When these hazards would turn into incidents, she had no way of knowing either. Her second hope would have to have left when the allied would come for Hoffnung.

 **Mausoleum, Schayne Plains, Belka, 10/06/1995, 14:00, Weather: outcast, risk of thunder.**

It was during one of the moments in which the two current inhabitants of the Mausoleum were occupied to two different things. Kellerman had managed to salvage the radio of his own F-4X III Geist now laying in the dust here and was trying to fix it. It was a bit difficult for him, being not as much of a tech-savvy than his younger students He was born at a time where crystal radio were still a thing, and not a piece belonging to museum. He was born in an era in which radio using FM bands were only pirates' radio. He didn't try to comprehend the complexity of the Phase Modulation technology in it. Only to have access to an AM/FM radio. It seemed enough for him if he wanted to stay in touch with the rest of the world, at least news wise. Maybe fate had made him do these little repairs. Or he would have never seen this specific message a few minutes later.

At this precise moment, he wasn't the only one tinkering around the technology that had been left here. But Iskanda had chosen to look around the ultralight plane that had rest below a big piece of white fabric. On the opposite of the spectrum, its silk was pitch black, maybe it was some aircraft made for night flight. She was unsure to use the term "silk" to designate the shaping of the wing, because it didn't feel like silk or any synthetic tissue she had felt or worn. It seemed to be extremely light, even a bit lacking thickness to resist much from her point of view, but maybe it was one of these new "intelligent" tissues or something like that.

Another thing that startled her was the energy of this ultralight plane. Usually, a light thermic high-efficient engine was used, sometimes it was even old motorbike engines that could be use. But here, it was a strange propeller, that was made of concentric layers of metal, linked together by over metallic plate that were cutting the metallic hollow cylinder into thirds. Maybe it was one of these electric engines that were able to produce wind without moving parts. She had already seen some high-costly cooling fans that used such systems, but they were more prototypes than mainline products, and as such, she never offer much attention to this nascent technology. The battery was not like the one of cars. It would have been far too heavy and far too cost-efficient. Strangely, the marking on it said that in order to charge it, all that was needed was water and power. She deduced it could be some sort of fuel cell, and was wondering why such expensive system was put on such an insignificant plane -because to the eyes of the fighter pilot she was, a ultralight plane had not that many use-, when Kellerman broke the silence.

To be honest, it wasn't Kellerman that broke the silence, but a streak of high pitched sounds that looked like some amplified Morse code. For what she could heard, it wasn't an SOS. It wasn't even letters, as letters had for signal, and she could count fifth of them between the small intervals. Of course, the emitted sound had nothing in common with the old Morse signal she had heard in movies, and for this reason alone, her curiosity was raised, and she darted toward the small room that was used as a basic dining room and kitchen, and where Kellerman was currently trying to write the short message on a piece of paper. The signal was only emitted once, which was difficult to listen too.

"Who can send pulse radio like this? Some radiostar thing?" She asked, doubting that it could be such outbound signal, and surely not some space signal but a more down-to-earth one.

"No Quasar or Pulsar here. Only someone that doesn't have much time, or his afraid to get caught by someone and thus had to act quickly. Luckily this military radio has a semi-automatic record system." He explained, as he rewound this small tape of five signal groups. He knew maybe Morse code better than the young one facing him. And the old Belkan code, unused since many years, that he had almost recognized, he was getting pretty sure about it. So he began trying some combinations, after having done a small periodic table on another piece of paper.

"I know Herr Thesermeister managed to figure that the ADFX-01s were carrying Hypersthene through his knowledge in applied physics, but in which domain will a periodic table helped us decipher a message ?" She expressed her curiosity once more; this piece of intel doesn't make sense to her no ringing any bells.

He stopped his writing for a moment, then remove some of the letters, only leaving the prefix of the supposed elements. His first try didn't make any sense for both of them, or only a tiny bit for him. And half of the element he was writing were unknown to her. Not fully unknown, she had heard their names in chemistry, but did not know the use someone could make of these specific elements, outside of deciphering some Belkan code. That seemed as simple as that twisted game Thesermeister had to use to decipher the resistance code.

For a moment, he almost ignored her question, so focus in the deciphering of this very short message, that was less than a half minute in duration. He rewound the message a dozen times more before meaningful words appeared on his piece of paper. And to be honest, meaningful word would have been better, since there was only one five letter word.

But as he wrote this word slowly his eyes lightened suddenly, he apparently found something, she guessed. And out of the blue he explained what he was using:

"These numbers are a combination of mass numbers and atomic number, the A and Z of the periodic table. The hard thing is to understand when to start and when to begin, and which one is an A or a Z. I think I have found the first word of his message. You see, the fifth first figures are 4,5,4,1,4. I do think the order is a ZAZ, because if we took them as only Z or only A I only get meaningless letters."

"Great use of physics. And?" She replied, a bit doubtful toward his results, not wanting to be disappointed by too much expectation.

"Well, in this order it gives Helium, Xenon, Stickstoff (Nitrogen). Or He, Xe and N. That made Hexen." He carried on with his strange explanation, that were only beginning to make sense with this word that Iskanda understood quite quickly.

"Witch. Are the allied preparing some magic tricks?" She translated the word. It was obviously a code name for something. It might be some Osean squadron. She had heard of the Wizard and Sorcerer squadron that had successfully destroyed several long-range raid groups of Belkan fighters and bombers at the beginning of the war.

"I doubt of this. But the two over elements made less sense to me : 42 can done Molybdenum or Scandium and 111 can ever give Roentgenium, three times Wasserstoff oder a combination of Bore and Wasserstoff, and I don't understand the -1" He shown his little findings on the second part of the message.

"Molybdenum symbol is Mo, it could be an abbreviation for Modus Operandi, or anything else. Besides, I know more words beginning by Mo rather than by Sc." Iskanda try to keep what was making the more sense inside of the equation.

"That would made sense. The - - 1 could mean to change the symbolic letter in one of the aforementioned elements. Then it doesn't make sense if its Bore or Wasserstoff, since their symbolical letter is their first letter." Kellermann conceded that Iskanda's reasoning seemed to be in the good direction.

"Then it would give R and t instead of g for Roentgenium. So Hexen Mort. What could it mean overall? Dead witches? Death of the Witches? Or the Witches of death? And why would the allies use Belkan words?" Iskanda tried to find the overall significance of this message, but only gave a flurry of hypothetical meaningless could-be message.

To this followed two Belkan Bad words, expressing their lack of luck "Gott Verdammt". And a few minutes of silence followed the profane words.

Then, in a spark of genie, Kellermann realized what the word Hexen was speaking off. He would have shouted Eureka to celebrate this success if he didn't know the true gruesome link to his past in this word. A past he had long thought to be far away, but not far away enough, as it seemed.

" The Witches will bring Death, that's the meaning of this very short message. And no, the Witches are not some Osean sister squadron of Wizard and Sorcerer. They're something far sinister. Weit schrecklicher (far more horrible)." He exclaimed, having no fear of any Osean squadron so far. These, he knew how to handle them: deception and better training were the two spearheads of the Belkan doctrine, which was meant to control the Belkan.

"What are those "Hexen"?" She sought to know how horrible these witches were, using the Belkan word this time. They couldn't be that much terrible than herself, she thought. She already considered herself to be pretty horrible, with her mind filled with matricidal envy.

"You have seen the Vulture in action. Pretty ruthless killer, isn't he?" He wanted to compare these two shadowy group. However, as he was about to point out, these two shadow killers had great disparities.

"I did, above B7R. He was just doing his job with great efficiency and not letting anyone interfere, but accepted help. Killing afraid people from Rald-Regiment didn't seem to frighten them either, even before Kupchenko gave them the order. But I guess Kupchenko had not convinced the Hexen mit Versprechern von Erlösung (promises of redemption), hadn't he?" She showed almost to no fear toward this pilot. She was surely as ruthless as he was, having shown very little hesitation when engaging Crow 2.

"There you must have seen that Zubov has some sense of honor. He might have lost every bit of honor he had as a Yukte pilot during the conflict in Romney. I think you know what happened in this troubled period: the Yukte pilots, following their command had to bomb what they had been told to be an abandoned town filled with criminals and radicalized resistance fighters. The truth was, with town was filled with moderate political opponents and people that thought they were safe because this specific town was known to welcome all asylum seekers. Zukov's plane were equipped with white phosphorus bomb. Casualties were in the thousands. It only led to much more radicalization of moderates, and even more blind bombing. In the end, Yuktobannia invaded to control the area that had gone crazy. Of course, when they were debriefed after the conflict, they bolted from the blue. And of course, Yuktobannia couldn't accept that these soldiers that had committed blatant war crimes on their behalf to live. Half of his squad was shot at dawn. The other were secretly recruited by Belka into its Night chase squad -the deserter killers-. But I guess I'm digressing with all of his story." Kellerman paused a little, still shocked by human nature. He had seen its core, and he could be wondering if there was a bit of light inside.

"Great. Now you manage to make me feel compassion toward the Vulture." Iskanda went sarcastic, even if honestly speaking, she was feeling a bit of this unusual sentiment for her toward these broken mans, abandoned by their lords and led toward damnation. It was understandable that they had betray Belka when Kupchenko gave them a chance of salvation, from her point of view.

"But these Hexen. They just kill to kill, without aim or purpose. They are the ones that will secretly torture opponents. At the beginning they were just a bunch of assassins. All womens. They had almost been all caught by the government preceding the Rald ascendancy. And the Rald freed them in exchange of little services. They rarely killed, but when they left their victims alive, what is left is more of an hollow body, and empty shell. Their methods can nearly wipe the minds of their victims." He confessed his real fear toward these dangerous women. He had already had issues with them, and to him, once was already one too many times

"How many are they?" Iskanda interrupted him, realizing that such unit would be a nice addition to her killscore. She was a bit afraid by his way of describing them but wasn't showing that much of it.

"12 younger, and one older. There was 13 of them before their chemist, Frau Toxis left. You know, the one that is one of the reasons for Kupchenko's survival. You want to know if you can try to fight them, don't you?" The old man raised an inquisitive gaze at the woman with half-tanned skin and black-haired woman, who was almost grinning out of excitement to fight such dangerous person.

"They aren't worthy adversary in an honorable way. But I'm not an honorable fighter. I think you already know that. Everyone had their weaknesses." Iskanda confirmed her intent to seek conflict rather than trying not to be within their grasp.

"Killing a few stranded Osean is one thing. Killing while outnumbered in the air is another thing. But killing while outnumbered on the ground is a whole different aspect of the fight. You might need to think this through before rushing in." Kellerman recognized she had great fighting skills. He couldn't give her proper and direct help, but a bit of intelligence about these Hexen, which he possessed, could turn the tide in her favor.

"It wouldn't be my first time." She smirked, drawing her blade from below her uniform. She had shown it before, and Kellerman had seen the reddish and yellowish marks of old rotten blood on all of its surface, especially its barbs.

"Indeed, your history is so tainted in blood that I could wonder if you're not some kind of blood-thirsty creature." He replied as he looked once more at the weapon. It was a piece of fine art, and through it she had turned the murder of her next one into a fine art too.

"I'll admit I'm blood-thirsty. Where could I slake my thirst?" She asked him, curious if he could guide her on what seemed to be a suicide mission. But Koenig had judged her tunnel run to Directus to be suicidal too, and yet she had obtained a great victory that day.

"That I can provide you data on it. Let's go for a little history lesson, shall we?" He invited her to sit with a dapper hand gesture. She nodded and sat on a chair in front of him, while he was looking at her with his hand in front of him, on the table and with interleaved fingers.

"They won't be in Hoffnung. Rather in Verzweiflungsberg (The Mountain of Despair.)."

"Fitting name, for a bunch of women that revel into breaking people's mind." Iskanda commented with humor.

"This place has a rather messed up story. In the High Middle Age, there was a town who was supposed to become the rival of Hoffnung, being on the other side of the valley on which Hoffnung is today. Back then the Löre was going through this city and not through Hoffnung. But following some natural catastrophe such as a big landslide, the river changed its course and began irrigating Hoffnung. The other city was soon abandoned, left to thugs, thieves and misfits. During the great plague period, it was there that the people of Hoffnung would send their sick to die. The place was a giant lazaret. These acts met their end with St Victoire's era, but only to reemerge once her rule has ended. Then, in the middle of our century, Belka chose to build an air force base over these cursed grounds. Sometimes, people reported to see "phantoms" on their radar and such. It was mostly due to magnetic anomaly or hidden experimentation of energy-based weaponry, but it didn't help lessen the reputation of this place. The airbase was deserted after the future Heirs of Kupchenko torched the place while deserting. A few buildings are left today. But there's another building that is still standing in this era: an old chapel featuring a crypt. It is said that there was Black mass occurred there in ancient times. And more recently, it is in the vicinity of this old church that Belkan patrols would find the opponents to Belka's regime, haggard, having lost all will and being almost dead souls in a living body." He described the place, that the Witches had judged to be fitting enough for their atrocious acts.

"So, a bunch of messed-up people are messing up with the head of some others, in a long messed-up place. I guess this place might need to be exorcised through bloodshed and fire." Iskanda showed once more her intent to do battle against these evil-minded persons. But was she less or eviler? She had only tortured Herr Zeichner through his psyche, but she was sure she could also break the spirit of some if she resorted to enough pain. Anyone would break with a certain point. She knew her was quite high, but she wasn't indestructible.

"I must precise that if you want to fight them, you'll want to be the one attacking them with as much fierceness as they have, and maybe even more. If they take you down one time, they won't let you any chance to survive. It's survival or death." He summed up what she should adopt to fight them. Sometimes it was needed to choose horror to destroy the horrific ones, to become a greater evil than these evils she wanted to take down.

"I won't back down in front of evil. They will know what horror mean in my book." Iskanda nodded, holding her blade strong in her hand, wanting to see it covered in flesh and blood once more.

"You might need to leave at nightfall. My Geist is out of commission, but the ultralight is a good plane." Kellerman insisted on the urgency of the situation. If someone had got wind of this, they needed, and more, she needed to act fast. These Hexen might like to take their time to slowly break their victim's mind, but once the process was engaged, it was quite hard to restore the people's identity. The few victims he knew of had become people locked in their own body, like if they had suffered hypoxia but had retained the motor function.

"That will be a first to me. Using an ultralight to go do battle." She asserted, not used at all to such plane without much electronics.

"This one is quite unique. It was meant to give the capacities for some Belkan stranded here to harass the enemy forces around here. It has a reduced radar signature, and its electronic engine without moving part made it quite silent. I will show some other things about it and give you some more advices against the Hexen." Kellerman told her this wasn't the basic ULM used for tourism or for fun. This was supposed to be use in war. Then both left their seat to look around the ultralight.

The few things he told her was to look for some case below it that she thought was some way to either carry ordnance or some payload, but it was just a case below it, put on the ground. It contained an oxygen regenerator, which was needed due to the cruise speed of the machine, which was above the hundred kilometers, an impressive foot for such kind of airplane and the lack of pressurization. Still, it had a light cockpit made of carbon fiber to improve its aerodynamics. The cockpit made her think about a bobsleigh more than a fighter, but both were designed with reduced friction in mind, after all. Another thing that this case contained was a pair of IR glasses, that for some reasons were not showing things in shades of green but in shades of red. At least she wouldn't see the blood she would spill. However, to diminish the onboard wait and electronics, there wasn't much to help find her path. And she would have to cross the Waldreich mountain, or at least go through some pass in the mountain, since the topology of this part of Belka was as following : the Waldreich were separating the south-west from the North-West, with the first being now the CSB. The closest city to the mountains was Sudentor, an important industrial center, but of lesser importance than Hoffnung. So, she would need to go around it. Among the data that he provided her was the time she would need to get there: almost three hours. He told her a few other advices, one of them being to seek something in the abandoned base they hadn't here but would be necessary to survive her encounter with the Hexen. He also helped her prepare her gear a bit.

She left at nightfall like he had suggested. This time, they couldn't use the launching system, the ultralight was too fragile for such high Gs. So, they had to make the ultralight go from its limit to achieve take-off speed. Her last word that Kellerman heard were punctuated with mad laugh of sick joy and were the followings:

"Hexenjagd hat angefangen (Witch-hunt has begun!"

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 10/06/1995, 16:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage.**

Far away and without any knowledge of what was happening, what had happened and what will happen in Belka, Pixy was chatting with two of the only people he could still trust in the base : Herr Steller, the chief mechanic, and Hervin, Herr Abweichler. Both had mixed feelings about what would happen for them. At least the last shipment, and the last Osean squadron that had arrived here were giving a few hypotheses.

"These F-15Es are full of sub-munitions bombs. They aren't planning to do precise bombing." Pixy rejected the idea that the war could stay clean. It hadn't been since the beginning.

"I agree, the target will surely be either Sudentor or Hoffnung. This will be again a tripartite battle, with again Belkan shattered between their loyalty to the motherland and the will of Gault 1. Besides, the Pendragon Projekt had many parts produced in Hoffnung. Both the allies and the North Belka have interest in burning this city to the ground." Hervin agreed, lowering his gaze, not liking the idea to see the motherland burning. But if they attacked, the air would burn too : Kupchenko was not afraid to use Excalibur, even to strike at defenseless ground forces. Allied losses would be again in the hundreds.

"They are intending to burn it. I thought they were carrying tanks, but these things they had on their underbelly are white phosphorus bombs." Herr Steller pointed out, knowing the terrible effect of such chemicals.

"And I thought it was banned by the last war convention. Apparently, it isn't. Or Osea had forget their holy idea of "conquering to bring freedom". They will only bring death. Freedom is in life." Pixy was forced to agree that Osean had forgotten their way in this war. Everyone had. What have they become, he asked himself? Were they still the good guys? He knew what he would tell if an Osean ask his mind about this subject: define "good".

"Besides, I don't know what they are going to do to circumvent Excalibur." Hervin made notice of the first reason that could jeopardize the allied bombing raid. It was the reason why the allied hadn't obtained any victory since a month.

"I don't know to be sure, but Perrault was bragging about something. He said, I quote that if Kupchenko may have some fairies and wizard to protect his forces, we had some witches striking on our behalf, or something like that." Steller intervened, the Osean bragging about that like these Witches could bring the unexpected yet wanted victory. Because if Osea and Yuktobannia had managed to keep their morale and will to fight high enough, it had gone low in Sapin and Ustian forces. There were rumors that these latter countries were secretly talking peace with the CSB, but they were only mere rumors and few people were giving them any weight right now.

"Well, I do not believe in magic tricks. I hope I won't have to fight against that black Berkut above Hoffnung. His or her pilot was ruthless and dauntless, and alone this Belkan was responsible for dozens of allied and North Belkan deaths." Pixy pointed out another reason to why the third battle over B7R had ended in an utter disaster for the allied forces. To him, it had been a total victory, as he slaughtered the Grabacr. It still remembered watching Ashley Bernitz being vaporized by two static FAEBs. He had tear of joy in his eyes when he recalled that story to the resistance members, while the nearby Oseans judged him with contempt, as he left several of their men die to accomplish his personal vendetta. But their mind mattered not to the Belkan mercenary. Only his Vergeltung (vengeance) had mattered.

"I hope for you too. We are still out of red paint." Steller retorted before laughing a bit of this funny situation.

Yet Pixy wondered if he wasn't laughing for another reason. He had often found him smiling, him and other Ustian resistance members when they were talking alone and far from Osean hears. Maybe they were simply mocking the Osean -they had all the good reasons to mock these traders-war-profiteers, and he had too-, but they were showing a bit too much of enthusiasm for him. He had only seen such before the last great victory they had, the retaking of Directus. Were they expecting a victory? Yet, what does a victory for Ustio mean now? Ustio had been freed, and only a margin of the Osean contingent was still left, since they couldn't operate from Directus nor Solis Ortus. This left the mercenary with more questions than answer in the end, and enough hypothesis to write a three-hundred-page philosophy thesis.

 **A second short filler chapter has been filled, with a bit more of historical details. Soon the action will begin. The next chapters will contain a lot more of action than those two lasts, be sure of that. Words will be swept away, living place to action, mercy (huh, no, they won't be any), sacrifice (there will be some). They will be moment of pure passion. At least it's what I hope to achieve.  
** **So, these ones were a bit more about how things evolved outside of the battlefield, something we rarely have in ace combat. More than often we don't have any data on the true consequences of war, for both parties involved in these wars.  
** **Anyway, i won't get too philosophical, I let that to Pixy.** **I hope I didn't lose anyone with physical talk about the use of the periodic table. There will be a test in the next chapter… (Just kidding…)  
** **I tend to use Word to diminish my grammar and spelling mistakes. I have a good level in English and German, but I know next to nothing in Spanish though. So, if anyone want to make suggestion for the words I use in this language, I'm open to suggestion  
** **Feel free to review, favor, comment… Und bis nächst mal, Lesern und Leserinnen.**


	22. Hexenjagd (witch-hunt)

**A/N: I prefer to warn that this chapter is at the limits of the T and M rating**

 **Some old crypt, Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 10/06/1995, 23:00, Weather: little night fog.**

Vasquez was awakening, not due to some iced water this time. Maybe if she knew in which throes she was, she would have been gladly awakened by iced water, this time. This time it seemed more like she had hit her ulnar nerve, but in all her body. She hadn't opened her eyes yet. She was trying to remember why she had gotten unconscious this time.

She remembered having gone to her room after some successful negotiation with one of the engineers who had conceived the pioneering energy source that was powering Excalibur through superconductor cables. Source that needed to be dismounted and reassembled at Tauberg, where it would be out of reach of the allied forces. And as such, Excalibur fire would be a bit weaker these days, but the power of all of its secondary power plant was enough to generate Helligen Kolumne, but with greater interval of time and a bit less ionization of the air. She remembered having seen flowers on a small vase, apparently brought by the mayor of Hoffnung to thank Kupchenko and the CSB to agree at welcoming the en masse fleeing people of Hoffnung that had already taken the route of exile. Then, she had smell something, her whole body had become limp, and she lost consciousness. The reason why was explained by one of her abductors.

"Chloroform must have ceased its effect by now. Make sure she's awake." A female voice said with a thick Belkan accent. A hard slap on her cheek followed, removing the final bit of sleepiness from her body. She could feel the heat from this violent gesture, so the masked woman who had struck at her wasn't giving her a try. No, she had done that bluntly and violent. She had felt her head shifting side from the strength

Then she realized she was bounded to a metallic chair by both metallic shackles on her wrist and ankles, and pieces of some synthetic tissue for her torso. She also felt as if someone had put small needles through her skin, like if someone was giving her an acupuncture sequence. And from time to time, she could feel small discharges running in her body, that might have awoken her.

"Look at us, my dear. It's the last thing you'll see before we tore apart your mind." The same voice spoke again, and she look up at her abductor that were surrounding her in a circle. They were maybe a dozen of women watching her. All wearing dark tabard with white hoodies with black leotard below but one who had the same clothes, but with the color inverted: white tabard and black hoodies. Looking at her surrounding was simple: she was apparently in an old cave, which had small stone walls and a semi-cylindrical ceiling made of the same small stones. White stones that reverberated well the lights of the neon bulbs she was seeing above her. On these walls she could see old medieval carving, most of them looking like cross, but all inverted. These walls were no more of a sacred place, but a desecrated one.

"Quién eres? ¿dónde estoy? (¿Who are you? Where am I?)" She asked, out of fear and incomprehension of this whole situation. If she had known she would have been involved in such, she would have surely refused the order of Kupchenko. She had feared to face Iskanda. Now she would have wanted to be fighting her instead of these faceless abductors.

"I know your tongue, traitorous one. We are the Hexen. And about this place… This is where we shatter the mind of those who oppose us." She retorted in a cold voice. It hadn't the commanding tone of Kupchenko, but it was cold enough to make understand that her mind wouldn't be the only thing to be shattered during her time in this desolate place. If she survived it.

"I'm seeing worries on her face, Mutter." One of the other "Hexen" spoke, noticing the fear growing on the Sapin's face. If she was on an electric chair, her sweat would have been enough to make a short circuit. If she used the expression "sweating bullets" to describe her state of anxiety and fear right now, the bullets would have been two hundred-millimeter naval shells. She had the feeling she was sweating litters that would run down her back. This left her almost freezing. And the cold air in this place wasn't helping to get her any warmer.

"Kein Furcht, Sapin. Wir morden nur die Seele unserer Opfer, nicht ihren Körper." Was the threat of the one they called "Mutter". She doubted all of them were her daughters, but it was maybe some ranks or affiliation of some sort.

"No Belkanès." She muttered, having understood that their intend were crude ones, but not to which extent.

"That was too be expected. We can offer the translation; it will be one of the last words she'll remember." One of the "Töchtern" (daughters) conceded, letting a sinister laugh afterward. Laugh that added with the last word only make only the more intense the worries of the now deeply afraid Espada 2.

"Do not fear that much. We do not murder the bodies of our victims. Only their spirit." Another translated, which do not ease the worry of the Sapin pilot a single bit.

"She might be wondering what'll happen to her." Another one, which was behind her intervened, on a sarcastic note, like she was fainting to care about the Sapin's fate.

"We have discovered this funny thing named electric acupuncture. Usually it's used to ease pain." One began the description of what she was going to endure. What had they done to her body, the Sapin wanted to ask, even if the response would be obvious: something bad, that will make her suffer way more than a few bruises and a sprained ankle.

"But here we have inserted them next to the major nerves that are near the center of pain of your body. You see, some signals go through some nerves, and there's almost a little pain map you can draw after some experimentation." The "Mother" concluded the explanation. Vasquez didn't want to know what kind of experimentation they could have done to obtain such results.

"Du wirst quälen, Abweichler (you'll suffer, Renegade)." Were the last words she heard, before she slowly felt the electric tickling becoming stronger and stronger. The pain in her body suddenly increase multiples times, to a point where her vision became blurry and her breathing rhythm erratic. She hadn't had the translation for these last words, but the intonation that had come with them, and the subsequent sufferance were enough to translate them for her.

However, and to her demise, they had indeed no intent in killing her through electrocution, fibrillation or suffocation. They only wanted her to experience pain and utter sufferance, but without killing her in the process. As such, small periods of this unbearable torture were periodic, of small period in which she felt like she had run a marathon, gasping for air as she had been screaming from the pain at the top of her lungs. She thought she would choke from screaming so much, but these Hexen where making sure she wouldn't die. Her body wouldn't die. But how much would her mind resist the pain before she went crazy and lose her head. She had heard about soldiers getting a bit of PTSD from certain conflicts, but at least she would have a good reason to have some at the end of this horrific experience. If only she had enough consciousness to feel any of it, she realized as another sequence of these discharges began.

 **Some old crypt, Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:00, Weather: little night fog.**

How many times had passed, she asked herself. Hours? Bare minutes? Or even days? She could have been through comatose due to the pain and she wouldn't have noticed it. Such pain couldn't be counted in hours. Only in litters of tears she would cry after such painful moments.

Yet this time, the small pause took a bit more time than usual, and they ask her some question. After all, they were submitting her to the question, literally speaking. She thought she wouldn't have to bear such cruelty when she engaged in the army. She guessed she hadn't anticipated all of that back in Sapin. Nor when she agreed to go to Hoffnung on the CSB's behalf

"Talk, Sapin. What are you helping to smuggle for your new master? His lackeys are keeping that covered quite well." The mother inquired her, having grasp her chin to force her to watch the faceless cloaked figure. Pure and cold hatred were the only thing she met in the Hexen's gaze.

"No sé … . (I know nothing)." She muttered with a trembling voice, not knowing all the specification of the shipments that were already gone. Most of it was.

"I just know it has something to do with magnetism. The lead engineer insisted that we handled the magnetic components with as much care as if it was Aarlon porcelain. And they filled twelve transport craft with it." The Sapin pilot simply described all she had seen. It wasn't much, but was she committing betrayal by giving those tiny details?

These tiny details meant few things indeed. Not enough to deduce the purpose of these fragile magnetic pieces.

"That could be used for anything, from a power plant to metallic treatment, and from a conveyor to a railgun." One sister said, admitting that abducting this one was pretty useless. They had planned to abduct the lead engineer, but he was always surrounded by people in the hangars, and he left onboard the first transport craft. Still, with the supervisor missing, the shipment would be delayed and the allied might have the time to strike before it would be too late.

"Was sollen wir von sie machen?" (what should we do of her) another spoke, as they were realizing she had no more usefulness.

"You are no more useful to us. You outlived your usefulness. But your body will serve us long enough, be ensured." The "Mutter" harshly added. Her fate seemed to be sealed by these terrifying words. What was she talking about when she spoke of her body, Vasquez didn't get it.

"Bereit den Seelebrecher (Ready the Soulbroker)." She ordered, and an Hexen went for a small container. Dozens of needles were stored in it, with some having strange micro wings on them. Maybe they were meant for projectile rifles or dart guns.

The Hexen took a few of them, then waited for the condensate water to dry. She then ruled out some of the needles, saying names that were deadly "Ricin, Thallium, Arsenic, Bismuth, Cyanide… not these ones, they are too quick."

" Ah, here we are, propranolol." She brought a needle filled with some translucent fluid.

"There might be "LOL" in the name of this chemical, but only us are going to have lots of laugh from its effects." Another said, as she came to Vasquez's side to maintain her arm in place while the other would inject her this product.

She tried to wrestle out, but the questioning session had tired her body to great exhaustion. She had no more force within her muscles, and her mind was close to go to limb. The effect of this product to her point of view was to increase this dreamy state, like if she was going high. She hadn't experience drugs in her life, and she might've wanted not to ever experience one. But apparently fate was not in her favor. First, she almost lost her wingmate, and now this? This was not fostering her resolve, only destroying it slowly.

"Now, your spirit will go to a happy place. Everyone has a happy place to go." The mother claimed, emphasizing the words "happy place."

They restarted the electrodes to enhance the effect of the drug. And the few fibrillatory effect this system had only further increased the diffusion. It seemed like if she was drifting, like if she was bearing so much Gs that her mind would go off, but she still had consciousness of her surrounding, somehow.

"May your mind drift away in your happy place. Let it be carried away by the eddies and vanish into the void." The mother said, while plunging another syringe toward her arm.

The second injection tore apart the final pieces of her sanity. Like the Mother said, she drifted away, lost in some kind of non-lucid dream. Her whole body had become rigid due to the current going through it, but when they shut the power down, it went sloppy, as she had no more control over it.

"Go to your happy place, Marcela Vasquez." The mother kept repeating with a falsely soft voice. With each time, Vasquez drifted a bit more from reality. She was losing all her control on her body definitively, while hearing some slow music. She knew she was still breathing, but she couldn't have a grasp on its pace. She was seeing her few happy moments in repetition, with memory from the war seemingly disappearing. The music become irreal, as trembling as she was, but around one note. She seemed to be coming from nowhere but her own mind.

Then, it suddenly increased. Going crescendo was an understatement. But it increased so suddenly that her mind went blank, then dark. She was lost in the darkness. But so were the Hexen.

 **Some old crypt, Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:00, Weather: little night fog.**

 **Warning, M rated part (bloody one)**

For Vasquez, she just went into unconsciousness. What had happened in the earthlier world in which her now lifeless body laid was far different from a change of tempo. More of a change of reality for the Hexen.

The Hexen were still gathered around her when it all happened. In a fraction of a second, all neon bulbs on the ceiling exploded, spreading tiny burning pieces of glass everywhere in the cave. The intense brightness of the flash they produced during the explosion made quite hard to see in the darkness for the seconds following it. The white walls were now like an abyss of darkness, it was pitch black, maybe a tan brighter than Vantablack. Furthermore, the powder within the neon bulbs wasn't helping to see either, as they scrambled to look around for flashlights.

"Was passiert? (What's happened)?" One Hexen shouted in astonishment, one second after having to shake her hand, as a piece of overheated glass had fallen onto it. Now the upper side of her right hand was slightly burned from that piece of glass. It would leave a mark, if she had the time to ever cicatrize it.

"Einige elektrische Überlastung, ich glaube." (Some electrical overload, I believe). Another replied, suddenly lacking in confidence.

"Und was passiert mit dem Wachen? (And what's happened with the guards)" Another added, having heard no alarm from the three man they paid to guard the entry of the old desecrated church in which they were doing their quite unholy acts.

But their search for light, as well as their small talks were interrupted by a strong deaf sound. It was the sound of the heavy doors that just slam shut in the upper level. Doors that usually required more than two people to open them, as they were ten-centimeters thick oaken doors. Silence come back again, but it only raised their level of anxiety.

Then, something more worrying broke the silence. Sound of heavy step descending the stairs leading to that cave. One could have chosen to use the darkness to enter here unnoticed. Yet, the infiltrator was doing the opposite, making sure to slam loudly her thick soles on the ground made of stone, wanting to be heard, as the sound was rezoning quite loudly in this cave, even when she was only on the first step. After all, what was most frightening for a middle-class predator than to be found in his most secret lair by a stronger predator? To know that there's no more escape to a fight he's not sure to win? To be able to hear him search for you, and shiver like a leaf in the wind? Maybe they were not down to that level, but some Hexen had surely loss their countenance right now. The fearsome ladies they were might be the most subjected to fear itself than the ones they preyed upon.

Suddenly the steps stopped. An Hexen turned a small light toward the stairs and saw nothing but darkness. And nothingness was all she would saw next. All that she would ever saw. The next second, some pneumatic sound could be heard, like if the infiltrator was firing something. It wasn't a gun, even with flash suppressor they would have seen something, and the noise of a gun would have deafened everyone in the vicinity. The sound of the projectiles was not the sound of bullets either, but more like darts or if someone used a very big blowgun. Yet, it wasn't darts, paralyzing or sleeping ones that were now embedded in the flesh of the neck of the Hexen holding the light. But old rusty metallic nails that caused her to choke, drowning in her own blood as the eight-centimeter long nail had pierced her skin and almost went through her throat, only to be stopped by the top of her spine.

She stayed upright a few seconds before falling head-on toward the ground where she laid in the throes of an horrible death. She never had the time to scream. Nor to express final regrets. Her light fell but didn't broke, and rolled a bit on the ground, only illuminating the last stair of the stone staircase as it stopped its motion only one meter before the entrance. It illuminated a leg from the infiltrator for an instant, before said infiltrator raised said leg and crush the light in one strike, filling once more the room with darkness.

Then, two red shaped eyes appeared where the infiltrator stood, almost floating in the obscurity. The Hexen that was facing her only saw two blood-injected eyes, with this feeling fostered by the strange red filter on the glasses of the infiltrator. Two eyes filled with all the hatred of the world looked at her, thirsty for blood. Before she choked on her own like the first.

Another fell to those nails too, the one that was right in front of Vasquez, and as such, this caused the unconscious Sapin to be covered in the blood of the dying Belkan, desperately gasping for air. Her arms moved erratically, almost like if she was trying to prevent herself from drowning in real water.

Another one chose to activate a fire-thrower lighter and oriented it toward the staircase from which the projectiles they had heard must have come. However, in the short period of time, the infiltrator had made a few steps forward, and as such, when she lighted her lighter forward, the thirty-centimeter long flame illuminated the dark clothes of the infiltrator. The flames actually licked her clothes, which didn't take fire for an unknown reason. She had the time to recognize the small fluorescent band of yellow and white that was on the chest level, and thus realize that this infiltrator was just wearing a firefighter suit. Which was made not to burn at first contact. Yet, the one she was almost trying to burn must have felt the heat, that was sure.

"You cannot take all of us." The Hexen holding the lighter asserted, trying to be convincing in her threat. She saw the faintly illuminated lips of her enemy grow into a smirk, who then happily replied:

"But I will take you, rest assured." She replied, affording to take a bit of heat. This way, she looked maybe more threatening than if she had acted immediately. You show more fear when you don't act than when you do, sometimes.

Still the heat wasn't enough to make her step back. She raised her unconventional weapon she was holding in her right hand, a nailgun, and strike at the wrist holding the lighter with it in an inward circular motion. Given the fact that the nailgun was made out of harden steel, the wrist was broken on impact, and the lighter fell. Which she caught in midair and light it back, but this time turning it against her former user. And used it to burn her face, causing a great scream of pain that was far louder than the small she emitted after the Hexen had her wrist broken. A strike of the nailgun to her temple silenced the screaming woman with a now distorted face, which she was holding in her hands as she tried to extinguish the nascent flames. And she silenced her definitively by firing three nails down her nape.

"Wer bist du? (Who are you)." The mother asked, not wanting to show fear by saying these three words with the rashest voice possible. At the same time, a small light was lit beside the woman, near the only other powered thing in the room, the cooled case containing the needles. But it was only a small projector, which lights reverberated a bit on the wall. Not enough to illuminate the entire cave, but surely enough to render the three motionless bodies visible to all in the room. Usually, they were the ones killing, not being killed here.

"Ein Krieger (A warrior)." The women that had already killed three of their kind spoke, smiling below her IR goggles. Smiling in a distorted way, but from mad joy instead of pain. The white walls weren't going to stay white for long. Maybe a nice crimson would be a better ornamentation than those reversed cruxes.

"Und was machst du hier, Mörderin (And what are you doing here, killer)?" The mother kept asking, while the two closest to Iskanda moved even closer, in order to attack her, or at least to distract her while the mother would enact one of her tricks against this assassin. They only murdered the soul of their victims, but maybe for this one they would make an exception

"Hexenjagd (witch-hunt)" The woman replied with more harshness in her voice than the mother had displayed. With more hatred that she had ever seen. She dispatched her IR goggles and the apparatus that was contained in a small headset, now useless, and look at the women she was about to make suffer with her very own eyes. Without the apparatus covering the upper part of her face, she was now far more recognizable for those Hexen, as she had surely been portrayed by one or two cams from journalist that recorded the ceremony a month ago in Directus. Iskanda Rayien wasn't maybe well known in this underworld of assassins hiding in the shadow, but she was going to be soon. She knew only one way to end Hexen, a very warm way.

She hung her nailgun back to her belt, using a small carabiner, before drawing her jade harpoon from a pocket. She wanted this to be up close and personal. She had already been deprived of a victory on Kupchenko when they told to use cyanide. Sure, this nailgun was maybe more reliable than the cyanide gun, but she hadn't that many nails in it left. At least not enough for all of the Hexen. She then looked at the nearest Hexen, and took a somewhat fencing stance, now sideways toward this black and white woman, which had removed their cloak to see a bit better. Both drawn small white ceramic knifes, a good weapon to infiltrate too, since it was less likely to be detect than metallic knifes. She was waiting for them to make their first move. She didn't need to say anything, her stance was saying all that mattered: "Come and get me" was the message. But "come to your death that you have owned" was her ill-minded intent toward them

One of them had to step above the body of the burned one at the left of Vasquez' torture chair, and as such she arrived with a bit of delay on the Erusean merc she hadn't recognized yet. The other one coming from the right strike alone, and thus was easily avoided by Iskanda. She then tried to strike from high, but her strike was something Iskanda saw coming from three thousand kilometers away, and as such, when she struck with her blade, she met nothing but air. This time Iskanda hadn't stepped back, but aside. With her free hand, she caught the wrist holding the weapon, and spin on herself, using the momentum of the Hexen to make her impact the other one that was forced to step back, and stumbled on the body of one of her already deceased sister.

"So predictable. As weak as Weeker." Iskanda laughed at the stumbling Hexen, before spinning back while keeping the arm of the first Hexen in a tight lock, folding the Hexen's arm in such a way to make sure she would either fall or have her shoulder dislocated. She fell hard on her back, and the shock in her arm make her let go of her small ceramic blade. Which Iskanda caught and throw immediately at the Hexen that had managed to stand back up. It entered her leg with a deafened sound, and as she was slightly stalled by the pain, Iskanda plunged her weapon down the throat of the Hexen laying on the ground.

The second kept advancing but was quite hindered by the wounds on her leg, having not pulled the weapon to avoid blood loss. Then she tried to strike, but the jade blade deflected her attack, and she lacked balance due to her wounded leg. She tried to attack with her other hand, but as she throw a punch that met only air again, Iskanda stepped forward, pushing the arm holding the ceramic knife, and stabbed the other that she was pulling back after her missed strike, with some very thin weapon. Weapon that revealed to be an especially very thin screwdriver that the Hexen saw when she had to step back after this infiltrator headbutted her. She didn't know if it was from the strong head-butt or the strike of the screwdriver that tore through her biceps, but she couldn't move her right arm anymore. She tried to strike one more time, but the jade harpoon was faster than the Hexen, and cut the wrist tendon, making her wrist bled heavily. And as she lost control other her finger from the grievous wound, her weapon fell to the ground. She knew she had lost when she saw her weapon falling on the ground.

"You were smart enough not to pull out the blade." Iskanda commented, managing to pull out the blade out of the leg after striking at her wrist. She did that we the hand holding the screwdriver and didn't kept the blade in her hand for a long time, only to strike at her leg once again, but at the femoral arteria.

"I… sur…" the Hexen tried to speak, but never find the word nor the strength to say them. The strike at her leg was only a distraction from Iskanda, as her main strike was done with the screwdriver one second after piercing the femoral arteria, which she inserted between two ribs, were the heart was supposed to be. The entire length of the tool went through the flesh, only to be pulled back as she pushed the motionless Hexen with the side of her blade, and due to the momentum of her fall the screwdriver was freed, only to create a severe hemorrhage. Iskanda had no means to check if she had hit the heart, or the lungs, but from all the blood pouring out of the wound, she might have some certainty about it. She twirled her weapons and wait for the next Hexen that was rushing toward her, screaming for vengeance after witnessing these horrible murders. But what had Kellerman said? To win over the one that reveled in horror, you need to horrify them more than they do. And she was surely on the good way to achieve such sinister goal.

"Stirb, Söldnerin (Die, Merc)." She threatened the Erusean, which didn't move a single bit. Apparently, this one was out of her mind, or filled a bit too much with vengeance, as she attacked without any weapon. This Hexen tried to catch the wrist holding the blade, only to see the arm holding it being faster than hers and catching her hand with the tip of the blade, like she had done to that rude Osean officer a few months ago. This time, however, she struck with much more strength, and actually dislodge a carpal bone as she pulled the blade out of the hand.

"I don't authorize you to kill me. Only to try and die." She replied as the Hexen had stepped back, holding her severely wounded hand, only to receive a direct hit of the hilt of the blade to the chin. Thus, she stepped back once more, but she stumbled on a dead body, like the one she was trying to avenge. And in one swell motion, the screwdriver went right for the gap between the Hexen's neck and shoulder, in the same spot where she had struck that whoremonger almost a decade ago. However, unlike for that man that she did let live, she pulled the screwdriver out of the wound and plunged it in the nape of the Hexen. This Hexenjagd was going well, she thought. Maybe too well for now.

"Du wirst hier sterben, Söldnerin (you'll die here, merc)." The mother repeated the threat of her "daughter". Only to be ignored by Iskanda, but this time the threat was at least enacted, as she lifted some dart gun toward the interested. And her fire went through the thick tissue, before diffusing its product. It wasn't some sleeper agent; it was something far more gruesome, acting in more vicious ways.

"You will have to do more than that!" Iskanda retorted throwing her screwdriver toward an Hexen that kneeled to avoid the weapon, but as she stood back up, she was barely able to block the strike of the jade blade, and even less capable of blocking the dart Iskanda had pulled out of her flesh, only to use it to pierce the carotid of her enemy. She fell on the ground, holding her hands on her throat, trying to jugulate the terrible hemorrhage. Now there was only six of them and the mother.

"You will succumb, foolish one! You were foolish to believe you can beat us!" The mother claimed, yet having a hard time putting full confidence in her speech. Never had anyone went this far at killing her daughters. Never had anyone killed any of her daughters, to be exact. She fired again, and despite Iskanda trying to duck out of the way, another dart hit her.

She pulled it out, and as one was approaching with a syringe, she foot kicked her hard in the stomach, using her thick boots. She might have broken a few ribs in her strike. And as the woman was a bit startled, she struck back with the dart, below the chin of the woman. This caused her to scream, but her scream was no more understandable, as her tongue had been pierced by the long needle too.

Iskanda attacked one of the fifth sisters having survived her onslaught so far, but this time she was the one to miss her target. And the Hexen was the one that stepped forward, and punched Iskanda in the gut. It was like time had slowed for her. Her reflexes were weakening. She felt an air current near her nape, and try to duck out of the way, but she didn't duck fast enough. She felt the needle going through the skin of her shoulder. It wasn't that painful, since it was where she would receive her vaccine. But she doubted greatly that the product in those syringes was any vaccine, and for good reasons.

Yet, in her downward motion, as she realized she missed her escape, she tried and managed to catch the arm of her attacker. And as she went even lower on her knee, the Hexen was thrown over her head, like this one Osean commando had done to her in the Schayne Plains, and with the momentum the foots of the Hexen attacking her from behind struck in the chest of the one in front of her. She heard satisfying cracks, and great scream of pain. The Hexen had to stepped back, after having her air pushed out of her lungs due to the shear strength of the impact. Still, Iskanda was feeling more and more tired after these three shots. For the Hexen that had survived having a syringe in her chin, she was without mercy, pulling the needle out of her shoulder skin only to plunge it into her neck. This one would not strike back.

But the other had managed to stand back up. Iskanda tried to pierce her, but once more she was outspeeded, and the Hexen went sideways, only to let a clear window of fire to the mother that hit Iskanda in the chest. Twice. Now she was feeling her blood running cold, when at the beginning of the battle it was burning and boiling of hatred. She was feeling so weak that she almost fell, having to step forward clumsily to keep her balance, and was beginning to slowly lose consciousness.

"Can you feel that fear, as your heart is slowing? As your heart is stopping?" The mother taunted her, trying to induce some fear in the dauntless mercenary that had now killed more than half of her daughters.

"Death does not frighten me. You should be." Iskanda manage to keep her balance and her strength for a final strike, throwing her blade to the bottom of the throat of the Hexen she just struck on her chest. The blade was well embedded, and the barbs made it impossible for the Hexen to pulled it out. She fell to the ground, drowning in the blood pouring from the bloody tracheotomy.

But a few seconds after she fell, Iskanda fell too, pushed like she was nothing by a simple uppercut in her cheek, in the throes of the terrible product that was slowly spreading through her veins. If she was stressed, she should have heard her heart pounding in her hears, and not anything else, but she only heard faint heartbeat instead of crazy ones like when she pursued Kupchenko in this ravine. She hadn't thought that accepting a mission to assassinate him would lead her this far back then. Yet, she was satisfied of having survived until then, against so many opponents and so greater odds. Of course, as Kellerman said, it was easier to take down fourteen persons in the air than here on the ground. Or below the ground for all that mattered

She knew she had one final trick to do. Pushing on one hand as had fallen on her belly after trying to evade that uppercut, she managed to lift herself up a bit, and used her freed hand to search from one thing inside an inner pocket of this firefighter vest she managed to find in the abandoned barracks of the nearby base. And like she had aimed with her screwdriver at the heart of this now very decease Hexen, she aimed at hers, but with only a syringe filled with her chance of survival. With Vasquez's and her only hope of survival. With her last will to fight another day. She hadn't even the strength to push on the piston of the syringe before she fell flat on the ground again. She had lost, once more. Who would save her this time? No Ste Victoire was going to appear out of the blue. Maybe a bit of luck could, she thought, as she drifted into the limbs.

 **End of M rated part**

"Is she dead?" One of the for surviving daughter asked, not wanting to take any risks. She had seen enough blood of her sister being shed on the white stones this night to have all the right to now fear this woman. Of course, not as much as Vasquez was afraid when they questioned hem, but anyone witnessing someone killing in rapid succession, and partially in the throes of ClK would be struck by fear.

"Dying." The mother commented, seeing the body being slightly lifted by the diminishing breath. Soon this assassin would have died, she rejoiced herself. For a moment, she thought she had her chances. But she discarded them when she chose not to use this nailgun anymore, and only resort to hand-to-hand combat.

"How did she survive Kalium chloride (potassium chloride, ClK) this long, mother?" One of the other survivors wanted to know if one of their favorite toxins had a weakness. Of course, she knew the old proverb: "alles ist Gift es kommt nur auf die Dosis an" (all is poison, it comes only from the doses). And apparently this one was pretty resilient to ClK

"She might have had a pretty big adrenaline rush. Hence five doses were needed. We will have to recruit after this night." She stated the only possible reason why she could have survived this long. Usually, two were enough to put anyone in cardiac arrest. To resist up to three was already something, and more was a great achievement. But to think that she was driven by some will strong enough to get such adrenaline rush when entering this place that should be frightening, in Verzweiflungsberg, was illogical to her. To stand up to Kalium chloride this far would have needed to have an induced overdose of adrenalin. Often this kind of reaction to fear would let people in a stammering state, paralyzed by the overflow of adrenalin. Not this one, apparently

Besides, she had had intel on where to find them. Someone had fed her with data. She knew the only alive person that had data on her. She wasn't just a lone mercenary discarded by the allied forces, if so...

 **Unknown place, Unknown country, Unknown realm, Unknown time, Weather: Unknown**

Sometimes, people say that when you die you see all of your life unfold in a flash. That's pretty much what happened to Iskanda, as she was feeling the energy of life leaving her body. She remembered the warning of Kellerman about this ClK. He had warned her right before she left.

"There's one last thing you need to know before going against the Hexen. They might try it to neutralize you." Kellerman said with a pretty worried voice. He knew what he was talking about was deadly. It wasn't Scharlach Tote but could be as deadly if well used.

"Und?" Iskanda wanted to know this last piece of intel, as she was already set up for the travel.

"They will try to poison you with Kalium chloride." He unveiled one the deadliest chemicals these Hexen had in their arsenal. It wasn't as fast as Cyanide, but its effects were better designed to be used on the battlefield. Both Scharlach Tote and Cyanide had too much of an area of effect when used as gas.

"You mean potassium chloride?" She translated the element. So, this is where the K for potassium was coming from. She always wondered why they used a K for an element with such name

"Indeed. In high doses, it can cause cardiac arrest." He told her of its effects on human bodies. Effect that he once experienced himself, and he didn't want anybody to experience it.

"Good. And what's the counter-poison?" She inquired, now deeply worried that this Hexenjagd could end very badly. She had maybe better chances to survive another battle with the Erben von Kupchenko.

"There's no direct counter…" He began to explain, only to be interrupted by a deeply worried Iskanda.

"Are you just sending me to my death, then?" She shouted, desperate not to be able to act.

"No. Before you interrupted me, I was about to say than you can counter the effect of this chemical through adrenaline." He explained the weakness such very specific toxin had. The toxin was not very strong by itself. It needed to be used in massive quantity to do enough damage.

"So, I just need to have a big adrenaline rush?" She thought she could handle this threat on her own. She would discover a few hours later than this what not enough, indeed.

"Es werde nie genug (it'll never be enough). You'll have to shoot yourself with adrenaline." He confirmed what she was experiencing right now, as she was drifting in the limbs and watching her short-term memory. She had just tried to, but hadn't been fast enough, one more time.

"Just one thing, how do you know so much about the Hexen?" She asked, now sitting on the side of the ULM

"I once was a young man and find myself attracted by the "Mutter" of the Hexen, their leader. She was quite a nice woman in the early eighties. However, she hadn't the same idea of funny nights than I did back then. Be put in cardiac arrest and then almost revived by an adrenaline injection is not how I pictured a first night." He recalled what had happened this night of 1989. He still remembered how he almost died that night, only to be brought back by this damn witch. And she, she was laughing, like she was finding that to be fun. Who could find fun in torturing in such devious ways a man she was pretending to have feeling for? Maybe the very person he was talking to right now. Of course, Iskanda was someone ready to go way further than he was if she encountered these witches. This is why he wanted her to know everything about them. So, he could hope that the next time he would see her, she wouldn't be in a coffin.

"That's kinda gross. Not necrophilia, but almost close." Iskanda judged such use of chemicals. She wouldn't be this devious in her questioning of these Hexen. More of a direct approach, through raw pain. They hadn't let her act as much on Günthar, but for these Hexen no one would set any limits to her mad spirit.

"Ich hoffe du wirst Erfolg haben (I hope you'll succeed)." Were the fostering speech of Kellerman. In the end, it was better if they all died. The world would be rid of them, and they would be forced to rest. He doubted such people could find peace in death, but he could hope too.

"Ich auch (I do too)." She said as she was finishing packing her stuff for this little Hexenjagd -which she knew as she was recalling these last advices, hadn't be crown with success to say the least-. She was sure all would end fine, especially given how she had first succeeded in entering in the area.

 **Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 10/06/1995, 23:55, Weather: little night fog**

She had landed silently on the abandoned runway of this deserted base. She didn't know why the Erben of Kupchenko had to escape from here, but they didn't put silk gloves when they covered their escape: there was many craters nearby, with some puncturing the runway itself. Luckily for her, the ultralight needed only two hundred meters to land. She could have landed even in the Valaisian Alps with it just fine -taken apart the powerful mountain wind that would have crushed such kind of craft like a bit of dead wood-.

Still, it had already been quite an adventure to get here. To evade Belkan patrol with such an aircraft wasn't easy. Many times, she had to land in tunnels or in nearby forest, plains or anything that wasn't making her airplane stand out too much in the night. Besides, following a flight path with just a simple plan, a red light and the star as compass wasn't as simple as she anticipated. She was maybe blessed with luck one or two times, as when she landed on some Belkan route were no vehicle was to be seen -maybe due to curfew or some other confinement measure-, she stumbled on some direction panels.

Another hard task had been to go around Sudentor. Right after going above the Waldreich mountains, who weren't as high as the Valaisian Alps. She managed to go through the latter using some mountain pass that wasn't watched that much, gliding above the waypoint with idle engine to maximize her stealth. The city itself had still quite a lot of light, so she saw it coming. But going around all of the patrolling fighters in the area was a bit more problematic. Still, flying very close to the ground, above the empty roads or just above the treetops revealed to be a good idea. She saw some F-15Cs and F-15Es from afar, wishing that they wouldn't see her. She had no wills to pick a fight with such plane right now. She would have her revenge later.

To be fair, there was maybe one thing that could have been tracking or could be tracking her right now: The Merlin satellite network. If they could track F-35s with ease, there was no reason why they could not track some ultralight. But maybe she was just blending very well with the dark ground in this night. Or the Merlin satellites were used for some other purpose right now. Or, there was a last reason: they had already seen her, and they had chosen not to act. And it was this last explanation that was the more relevant, but why would they let an adversary of their leader act?

She hadn't the time to ponder these question as she picked the lock of the old security station. She knew the arsenal would be empty, that was a certainty. But since the security station seemed to had almost burned, and had almost collapsed due to a bomb crushing some of its load-bearing walls, maybe they hadn't evacuated all that was inside, she hoped as she began her search for a bit of equipment to even the odds against the Hexen.

As she had expected, she didn't find any weapons in the forms of knifes or firearms. But she knew that many tools could be used as weaponry. At least, it was what decided her to pick one of the screwdrivers that was laying in the dust of an old workbench. Amongst other thing she found were some fire-resistant suit made for the local fire security teams. Given the fact that kerosene and other chemicals related to aeronautics burned to pretty high temperatures, she took it, knowing it could be useful if anyone threaten her with a lighter or a taser -that kind of stuff was isolated, at least she hoped it would be enough against such light currents-.

Her gear was completed by a pair of security shoes she found nearby too. These things had an iron sole, and even an iron plate on the upper side of the shoes. Of course, such plating could not stop bullets, but they could surely prevent anyone to pierce her foot with a knife, and even to damage her ankle, given the fact that there was plating in the ankle support. Obviously, it would decrease her mobility a bit, but she was pretty sure that such hard soles would allow a roundhouse kick to the abdomen to not only bruise but break ribs or the sternum.

And it was with this newly found equipment that she was now approaching the old church that Kellerman had described. Most of the exterior had lost any form of ornamentation through the years. Statues had lost their heads or had their faces burned by the acid rains produced by the nearby factories of Hoffnung. No stained glasses were to be seen either. But three guard could be seen just in front of the entrance. Guard with machineguns. Her nailgun was lethal, she was certain of this fact. As lethal as conformal guns, but she didn't want them to fire their weapons right away. She wanted to be heard at the right moment. At the moment that would put fear in the heart of whose who worshipped it.

She spotted a last thing: a small thermic generator that was running outside of the church. Its noise might be enough to mask her approach. Karma was definitely not on the side of these unfortunate guards that had nothing to do with the heretic deeds of the Hexen in this desecrated place. But they were an obstacle between her and a sweet victory. Obstacle that she would withdraw without any mercy.

Creeping slowly into the night, she was unnoticed to the guard until she was quite close, coming from behind a tree planted in front of the church. The said tree had not been cut in ages and had grown without any control, like almost everything around this place. But now that she was coming, her presence startled the guards. She was wearing black clothes but had not the hoodies of the Hexen. They thought only Hexens knew about this place. Tourist never came here after they found one or two disemboweled bodies.

 **Warning, M rated part (bloody one)**

"Wer bist du? (who are you)" one asked, pointing at her with his machine gun. Still, he was not that threatening, as he hadn't the finger on the trigger. He wasn't sure to shoot or not, Iskanda observed.

"Der dreizehnten Hexen (the thirteenth witch)." She replied, knowing that there was once thirteen of them, the thirteenth member being Frau Toxis, the own daughter of the "Mutter". Iskanda had wondered what the Mutter had felt when her own flesh had betrayed her for Kupchenko. Surely hatred and anger. These were the only feeling she had toward her own relatives, she had come to realize that fact too during her long ultralight flight.

"Es gibt ein dreizehnten? Oder sind sie nicht dreizehn mit der Mutter und die zwölf Hexen? (there's a thirteen one? Aren't they thirteen with the mother and the twelve witches?)" The same man that was staring at her with uneasiness asked to his colleague, turning his glare away from her.

"Und vielleicht es wird ein zweites, drittes und viertes Opfer heute. (and maybe there'll be a second, third and fourth victim today) Iskanda whispered, with a voice that seemed to be innocent and naive enough. But the intent she put in these words were all but innocent and naive. Only intents of death that would be enacted in a very short-term future.

"Es ist keinen Grund, so weit gehen. Gib deine Waffe und du kann ihnen anzuschließen (there's no need to go this far. Give me your weapon and you can join them)." The confused and afraid guard awkwardly responded, lowering his machine gun. He had all the reasons to be afraid, as he knew what the Hexen were capable of. He didn't want to suffer their ire, from one or all of them. But as he did so, the two others lowered their weapons, and thus their defenses.

"Gut. Deine Sorgen sind fertig. (Good. Your worries are over)" Iskanda claimed, as she drew her weapon, making them believe she was going to hand over it. The soldier was a bit doubtful, as he saw the kind of weapon. In the darkness, he first thought that it was a high caliber submachine gun, or something like that. Before he saw the tip of the nail waiting in the chamber, reflecting the pale light of the nearby neon bulbs inside of the church.

She was right when she said their worries were over. She had the three in arm's reach, as well as in harm's reach. Using her left free hand, she retrieved a small cylinder from one pocket. She was about to let her weapon in the outstretched hand of the guard when she moved her forefinger from the handle to the trigger. And fired.

The one guard in front of her stumbled to do the strength of the shot fired with such a small proximity. Like all the future victims of this weapon, he was hit in the throat, making sure he wouldn't stand up once more. The one at her right met the same fate when she stretched her arm in his direction. The left one, he had a different end that the two others, but he hadn't much chances of survival to her attack.

His death had come from the small cylinder bearing two small electrodes she had quickly pressed on his throat. This had activated the small ultracapacitor inside. This was the las thing they had done with Kellerman before she left : he explained her that the Belkan hand grenade were all equipped with such devices, activated once thrown, as such it was nearly impossible to throw them back at your enemy. Because these ultracapacitors they took from the old F-4E Phantom 2 laying in the mausoleum had an electrical capacity of ten thousand amperes. Enough to restart the engine of an airplane if hit by an EMP. Or to burn the nerves of a man more efficiently than the electric chair used in some Osean states.

For this reason, she didn't touch his body, not wanting to get hit by a bit of static electricity stored inside of it. The two electrodes had turned the skin black around the impact point, and the body was now smelling like some grilled meat.

"Tot ist das Ende alles Sorgen (Death is the end of all worries)." Iskanda asserted, as she walked away from her first three victims. And it was a certainty: she was sure that with the death of all those Hexen her worries would meet their end too. She had hoped that she wouldn't be the one to meet her end too.

The next moment, she hit the thermic generator with her second and last ultracapacitor she had. Under the electric shock, the generator overheated, as all its fuses burned at the same time. However, they didn't burn fast enough to prevent what she had expected to happen: all neon bulbs exploded, plunging the area into the darkness. Darkness that she had had to live in to keep her bloody secrets. Because she was certain, if the Hexen past contained a lot of blood, her past, even before she was in this war, contained as much, or maybe even more blood than theirs. Now she was just going to fill her present with a bit of blood, to equalize things temporally speaking.

And then she entered into the church, making sure to slam her sole on the ground in her way into the crypt. There was nothing in this church but old stones. The altar had been removed to allow access to the crypt that had been sealed by the heavy piece of stone. And removed was a polite way to say it: someone had pushed it with extreme violence on the ground, resulting in the destruction of the bid parallelepiped of karst and of the sculpture that had been carved in it. There were only remains of ornamentation on the ground, the last remains of a time in which the Verzweiflungsberg was not a lair for evil sorceress. She descended the stair with confidence, ready to battle with these horrifying persons with an equal amount of horror.

 **End of M rated part**

 **Unknown place, Unknown country, Unknown realm, Unknown time, Weather: Unknown**

And there she was again. In this dark plain that the limbs were in her mind. To be honest, they weren't as dark as the first time. These empty plains were more of a plain gray than of pitch black. After all, nothing was either black or white, and her spirit was no exception. She had thought there was a good and bad side in this war at first. No, she was realizing that there was her side and the other's, each good and bad.

"We meet again, Iskanda." A voice disrupted her chain of thoughts.

She turned away and was expecting to see Ste Victoire ready to provide her some wise thoughts or reassuring news. But she only saw the figure cloaked in black with an exterior outline of red at the bottom of her cloak and at the limit of her cuffs, from which skeleton hands were protruding.

"Death. I thought you were gone from here." She instantly recognized the obscure being, before looking at her scythe, which was not raised but only hold vertically.

"Are you here to claim my soul once more? It worked so well last time." She showed this unnatural being that death wasn't frightening her a single bit, like she had already displayed last time.

"You're a controversy, Iskanda Rayien. You bring people together and destroy alliances. You feel only hatred for your relatives but not for this Sapin that had betray your former allies." The dark figured spoke, with her scythe still idle at her side.

"I do not need to harbor hatred for her. I harbor enough for my relatives and Weeker than I hardly have enough room for anyone else." She retorted, not feeling such anger toward the Sapin. It was a bit harder to feel hatred for someone she had fought side by side over Futuro, and that had shown a bit of solidarity that day when Weeker shouted at her. Even if it was just mere compassion, it was great. She knew from the first moment on the ground that she wasn't with the allied forces anymore. That wasn't some breaking news at all.

"And no, I'm not here to claim your soul. Last time I consider you to be a traitor. I was wrong. Your motives are still aligned with the ideals of honor someone instilled in you years ago." Death specified, admitting that even her could do small errors of judgments. She had only betrayed the allied forces due to circumstances then. But now, she hadn't done the same.

"Do you consider I'm fighting for the ones who cannot today? That's a first." Iskanda recalled what constituted the honor of warriors for the bishop that believed in her and steered a bit her life back then. She hadn't followed this modus operandi since but might have this very night.

"You're the lesser of the two evils, even if you choose to act like if you were the greater." She commented her merciless behavior toward the three guards and the eight Hexen she dispatched with the downmost care in the world. She had acted like if she wasn't killing sentient beings, but just unnamed evil figures.

"You said you was fear incarnated. But not for these Hexen. I am." Iskanda pointed out, using the own words of Death against her. Even, if she might have died tonight, the last Hexen would never forget them. In a matter, she would live in their memory, haunting them for their fallen sister they couldn't save.

"Maybe you do. But we are digressing here. Why I was here was to say you it's not your time. Hell is your journey, not your destination of today." Death claimed, not wanting to take this one that would surely bring much more tormented souls to her kingdom in this war and the ones to come. Because she hadn't been blessed by the goddess of peace, but the ones of war. Peace, would she know it, the figure wondered. "It depends of your definition of peace." would've been her response if this warrior asked her about her future after this war.

"You mean…" Iskanda stammered, wishing that what she was living was not the product of the death pulse of her dying brain. If it was, then Death had truly nothing to be frightened of.

"LEAVE. and LIVE." The figure outstretched a skeleton arm toward her forehead, and as the nail protruding of the dead hand touched it, Iskanda felt like she was falling backward, going through her memories at full speed. Was hell just her journey, or her final destination, this time? Iskanda had no answer.

 **Some old crypt, Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:00, Weather: little night fog.**

 **Warning, M rated part (bloody one)**

They had seen the girl that had slaughtered more than half of their kind dying. And now she was surely dead, they all thought. They had even taken the harpoon out of the throat of her last victim. They could have chosen to finish her with her own weapon, it would have been such a sweet irony. But one that was a bit more doubtful than the others about this girl that had shown quite a strong resilience to Kalium chloride when most people died with one shot. Besides, they had thought that, when she was on the ground and was trying to lift herself, she would try to reach for her nailgun still attach on her side in the carabiner.

With a disdainful movement of her foot, she made the Erusean merc roll on her side. Thus, she could see that she had a hand inside of her vest, near heart-level. The thick suit was pressuring the motionless body a bit, so she couldn't see any breathing sign. Still, doubting of the death of this horrifying foe that nearly killed her when she fired her nailgun in the dark - she had felt something passing right to her neck in the dark -, she checked her pulse. She was expecting to have a very low one, or in the case of their success, nothing. But what she felt frighten her for a moment.

"Her pulse. It's not like bradycardia… but tachycardia?" She said, not understanding what she was witnessing: she was no seeing some very small breathing motions. With haste, she opened the vest of the merc, only to pull out an empty syringe.

"What was in that syringe? The Mutter asked, worried of the likelihood of survival of this damned merc. Until there no one had survived ClK when they branded him as their victim. But wasn't this merc that branded them as her future victims? The now dead bodies of her Töchtern were enough proof of that fact.

"It doesn't matter. Just kill her with her weapon. Offer her a death she had owned." The Hexen that had picked up the blood-covered jade harpoon handed it to the one closest of Iskanda. Now, they could see her body shivering slightly. They needed to act soon. Or their half-victory would be short lived. As short as the life expectancy of an Osean over B7R was.

"Es stimmt. Stirb, Söldnerin. (you're right. Die, Mercenary)" She raised the harpoon, readying herself to strike at the neck of the Erusean girl. She couldn't wait to see her half-tanned throat wide open, and the merc drowning in her own blood. Maybe her hopes were set up a bit too high. And they weren't in Hoffnung, but in the Verzweiflungsberg. Where all hopes were crushed.

To be honest, her hopes were not the first thing to be crushed here. Her jawbone was. As she was lunging downward to strike at her foe, she saw her pushed on her forearms backward, putting her neck out of range of her own weapon. Then, still supporting herself on her forearms, she outstretched a leg upward, as the body of the Hexen was bent downward in the anticipation of her strike. As such, instead of her weapon connecting with her neck, one of her iron-sole shoes connected with the chin of the Hexen, effectively dislodging her jawbone, causing her to drop the weapon as she wailed in pain. Her face was distorted by the pain, while Iskanda was grinning from the state of this opponent.

Quickly, she jumped on her feet, and with her strength fostered by the almost overdose of adrenaline she had right now, and that had allowed her to survive the ClK, she threw a powerful uppercut at the jawbone of the Hexen. It was strong enough to put it back in place, and also strong enough to knock the Hexen out, from the sheer pain she had just been submitted to.

"Wie haben Sie überleben (how did she survive)?" The Mutter questioned her, with panic gaining her voice too. Now, she wasn't sure to win this fight. Already so many of her Töchtern had failed to follow the ultimate rule of fight. Failure was not a teacher but a murder for her and her followers.

"Ich weiß nicht. Aber ich haben Tod gesehen. Und sie will deine Seele. (I don't know. But I've seen death. And she want your souls)." Iskanda exclaimed, having just picked back her weapon, its presence in her hand reassuring her a bit, thus revealing a bit of her strange dream. Sure, death hadn't told her she wanted them dead, but she wasn't going to spare them. And in all honesty, her survival was more due to dumb luck than anything: when she collapsed on the ground after trying to inject the adrenaline, her falling body had enough potential energy to push the piston of the syringe. Gravity had saved her, for once.

"And I'm not going to fall for the same trick." She grunted, before launching herself on the Mutter as she was reaching for the dart gun, that she had set up on the cooler containing the other poisons. But she never had the time to. An iron-soled boot struck her hand hard, before the closed hand of Iskanda throw her backward with a strong punch, having made sure not to fold her hand on her thumb. Or her adrenaline-boosted strength would have broken it for sure. But for now, both of these dangerous ladies had nothing broken.

"I don't like your white clothes. How about ein bisschen Scharlach (a bit of crimson)?" She proposed with a vicious smile, slashing through the thin fabric at chest level, creating three lines of crimson. She wouldn't die from hemorrhage right now, but it was surely painful. She had already experienced some wound at this point, and knew it hurt, even if she didn't show any pain on that day. Because her wounds were far less deep than she one she just inflicted.

A punch below the chin of the Mutter was enough to send her to some short-term rest. She had heard some teeth cracking under her wrath and was pretty happy to hear this. Now, only three Hexen were still left.

"Kein Flucht. Flucht ist Tod (No retreat. Retreat is Death)." She quoted Schwarze squadron on this. This being one of the Hexen that tried to reach the stairs. She drew her nailgun and fired on her back. Maybe some were imbedded into her spine or vital organs, because she stopped running right away.

"Dafür wirst du Sterben (For that you'll die)." One of the now two survivors threatened her. She walked hastily toward Iskanda. Who wanted to spare her last nails in her weapon, and as such, decided to use it for the blunt force the harden steel possessed. She tried to pierce the Hexen with her blade, expecting her to duck to evade. And as she ducked, she struck with the barrel of the nailgun right into her stomach. And as she was holding her stomach after having backed away due to the hit having surely hurt some organs, Iskanda foot-kicked her hard in the ribs. And to mean hard, she did strike hard: she heard something broke, but it wasn't just a rib. It was a louder noise than a rib would have done. Maybe she had hit the sternum this time. But the effect were imminent : The Hexen fall backward, but as she stumbled on the body of her Sister, she almost tried for an instant to conserve a bit of balance, but due to the momentum given by the strike of Iskanda, she still hit the ground, but head-first instead of on her back. She was not completely knocked out, at least not enough, as she was still conscious enough to see the demise of the last survivor.

"Nein. Du wirst sterben. Allen (No. You'll die. All of you)." Iskanda retorted after this very violent exchange of blunt force and stepped toward the last survivor. Survivor that preferred to wait for the strike, apparently.

So, she didn't wait for any counterstrike. She struck hard, holding her weapon with both hands. It took the two hands of the Hexen to block her fierce strike. But this was just a mere distraction. Which worked perfectly. Who wouldn't be afraid of a blood and flesh covered weapon, which blade had already ended the life of all her sisters, and the few still alive wouldn't last longer than a B-1 against an ERAAM. The one that tried to run met the same results, after all.

"Haben Sie nie gelernt, auf Ihre Umgebung zu achten (You never learnt to mean your surroundings)." She quoted to the Hexen, as both were engaged in this battle of strength. But raw strength wasn't enough, she knew it. Or Osea would have won this conflict long ago. Tricks, deception and technology was all that had allowed Belkans to thrive in this conflict. Sure, she might have lacked technology a bit when coming here, but she had tricks and deception on her side. And fear. The fear of dying was still there in her body, but it was surely stronger in the body of her opponent, right now.

She demonstrated her the lack of attention to her surroundings, as she let a small "Wie?" of incomprehension. Followed by a powerful scream of pain when the right leg of Iskanda kicked her between her leg. They had told her in self-defense that it wasn't because you could turn someone sterile that such strike was that dangerous. Now, it was because it could break the perineal. And thus, the spine, in some kind of chain reaction. Such a hard strike in the right place could be lethal.

The Hexen hold for a few seconds the weapon but couldn't keep it as her body was crushed from below. She fell backward, vanquished. There she laid, her eyes rolling. She was surely dead or dying. But it didn't matter a single bit. All would meet their end here. Even the ones that were maybe only knocked out. She would let much survivors than Excalibur. Sure, she survived it, but she was an exception to rules, sometimes.

Then Iskanda spotted the penultimate survivor, that tried to creep toward a ceramic knife. Her breathing had become harsh due to the crushed ribs and her damaged lungs. Harsh as a wheeze. She wouldn't last long without medical support. Which was non-existent in the area. Maybe she would try to throw the knife afterwards, if she took it. But she removed that if by walking over the hand of the already severely wounded sister, crushing its carpal bones under her iron-soled shoes.

"Ach, es tut weh, recht (ach, it hurts, doesn't it)?" She laughed at the severely injured. And to say they thought they had almost succeeded at killing her. But almost was too much for her. She kicked her head with her foot, dispatching without giving her any importance to her eyes. She wasn't killing sentient being this night. Only ridding the earth of horrors that she needed to annihilate, as a warrior. She would've never tried to negotiate anything if they ever propose to. Such horror needed to be killed.

Another one of the few still alive manifested herself too. The one she had dislodged and relodged the jawbone with blunt force. She tried to get to her feet but was still suffering from having her jaws having done a back and forth journey outside of their joints. As such, she was incapable to even say a word, due to the pain. A simple kick with her right knee was enough to put her back in a motionless horizontal stance. Then she fired two nails right at her chin. From the trickle of blood running out of her mouth, Iskanda could guess she might have hit her gums.

"Je lui ai cloué le bec, à celle-là. (I nailed her, in her face)" She laughed even more from this little Erusean joke. It was dark humor for sure, but a good joke to her, that kept her laughing for some seconds. Not as much as when she would recall her mother's demise, but still enough to enjoy it.

The only one she needed alive for now was alive. But she needed her to stay still. The last nails in her gun were enough to accomplish that task. She wouldn't move. Besides her final travel to hell, of course.

As she made her way to the stairs, as she needed to pick something, she had let there before her fight, she freed Vasquez and removed with care the small electrodes that had been embedded in her skin. Luckily for her, these weren't meant to harm by themselves, and as such, they weren't bearing barbs and only left marks not that big that insect bites.

"You haven't lost any weight since the last time I had to drag you." Iskanda commented as she set the Sapin on her back, putting her arms above her shoulder line and getting upstairs with the motionless pilot. On her way she had to step over some dead bodies, or even step on when she walked in the one laying motionless in the staircase.

She would come back a few minutes later, having set the Sapin pilot on the only remaining pristine bench in the church above. Now, the rescue part was over. She allowed herself a bit of rest. After all, the funniest part was about to begin, she realized as she descended the stairs a second time, without worrying about anyone this time. It was the other people, and the few with a bit of life still within them that should be worrying right now. But like for the guards, their worries would be terminated in the more efficient way very soon.

One showed her worries very bluntly as Iskanda passed right next to her, carrying some chemicals that would get in handy to make talk the Mutter. The one that dared to talk was the paralyzed one, laying motionless in the staircase.

"Kannst du mir nochmal verzeihen, was wir getan haben, und mein Leiden beenden? (Can you even forgive what we did to you and end my misery?)" She pleaded with a desperate voice. She had tried to run, so she was already desperate when she saw this inhuman adversary coming back from the dead, only to bring dread.

Iskanda left her stuff on the ground of the crypt, and reached for the head of the paralyzed Hexen, taking her chin in her hand so the Hexen would meet her gaze. Of course, she was only throwing her death glare, that needed no words to sum them: her response was going to be a negative one. But maybe she would still end her life.

"Durch meine Leben musste ich lernen, dass es Menschen ohne Anstand gibt, die ohne Zögern und ohne Mitleid bekämpft werden müssen." (In my life, I was forced to learn there are those without decency, who must be fought without hesitation, without pity.) Iskanda gauged the claim of the Hexen. Did she owe this sufferance? Yes, it was a certainty. They have hurt people so many times than they deserve to feel all the sufferance they had put their victims through. As such, the second part of her response nailed a bit more the coffin of the Hexen. "So werde ich keines zeigen (So I won't show any)."

And the third part of her response, which was followed by Iskanda knocking out the Hexen by throwing her chin she had still in her grasp to her right knee, nailed definitively their collective coffin. Without the need to use her nailgun.

"Und Außerdem, ist Vergebung zwischen Gott und Sie. Nur mein Job ist es, das Treffen zu arrangieren, mehr nicht (Besides, forgiveness is between you and God. my job is only to arrange the meeting, nothing more.)." Iskanda washed her hands of any last bit of guilt she could have had while taking them down. Their destinies weren't theirs anymore. They were hers now. Her to be destroyed and terminated, like she terminated that Terminator pilot above Directus. Last time she remembered feeling true guilt was when she stole from Myriel. And never since.

 **Some old crypt, Verzweiflungsberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:15, Weather: little night fog.**

She thought this miracle woman that had survived Kalium chloride would have killed her on the spot. But she only injured her at the chest. These three slashes across her body were like three big burns where her flesh was assaulting her with a thousand little pains. And more little pains were coming from her heated cheeks, like if someone had given her a few hundred hand-slaps across her face, at least.

She only had to open her eyes to meet the death glare the merc was throwing at her. She was going to kill her, she was sure. How, she had no certainty. But the fact that she had attached her by nailing her fabric to the ground was not something that was a quick death guarantee. More of a long, painful one. One thing that disturbed her was that she had torn the clothes were the three slashes were, partially revealing the naked chest of the fifty-four-year old lady. Was that merc some kind of pervert?

"oh, you're awake. Only after thirty-seven slaps." Iskanda said with a falsely innocent voice, as she was reaching for some white plastic cylinder. For an unknown reason, she was wearing gloves. And that bottle wasn't some salt, but some very dangerous detergent.

"What are you going to do to me, pervert?" The Mutter tried to express some anger, only to be turned a bit calmer by the tip of a harpoon near her throat.

"Soon, you will wish I was that kind of pervert." Iskanda negated her claim, before laughing like a mad man. After all, she had never been attracted by no one specific, will it be a man or a woman. And the idea of torture she had for this night didn't involve anything funny in that sense. Well, it was funny to her senses, but not for the senses of any normally constituted human being.

"So?" The mutter kept asking, waiting for her demise. She could bear a bit of pain. But what would this merc encumber herself with some oven detergent.

"It's said that some people like to put some Sodium chloride on the wounds. I guess you might prefer some Kalium chloride. But I do prefer Sodium hydroxide." Iskanda explained what was in this box, and that she intended to put on the three still bloody wounds.

"Was? Sind sie Verrückt?" The Hexen shouted, as the merc sat beside her and began opening the small cylindrical box. The thick chemical smell began filling the air, mixing a bit with the smell of blood.

"Schöne Kompliment." She took the insult of the Hexen pretty well. She knew she was crazy. But it was so fun, doing the wrong things for some time.

"Let's clean these wounds with a bit of caustic, shall we." She finally opened the box, and using her hands covered by the plastic gloves she had find with this few chemicals a bit sooner, during her looting party of the base, picked a bit of caustic, and dispersed it over the wounds like if she was seasoning some meal. Of course, not even the hungriest cannibal would try to taste this one.

And in the nearby flowing blood and sweat that was covering the now very afraid Hexen, the caustic began to dissolve, with some nice little bubbles. Yet, as it was dissolving, the nearby skin began to dissolve too, only increasing the size of the nearby wounds. If it only increased the wounds, the Mutter wouldn't have begun to let some scream of pain after a few seconds of silence. Because the corrosive effect of the caustic was pretty hard to bear, even for a person so accustomed to see pain and provoke it.

However, there was a world between causing pain and understanding it. And now, under the cruel hands of this merc that she thought she had killed her only a few minutes ago, she was rediscovering sufferance. Her skin was burning like if someone was playing with a Bunsen over it. And the Bunsen would have been set to the max temperature, and was still increasing, as she was adding even more caustic to her wounds. Furthermore, where her wounds were situated, the chest, was quite a sensitive area of the skin for womens. It only further increased the pain she was suffering right now.

In her research, she had sometimes stumbled upon the horror of the Skin Hers. To skin people still alive was above her understanding. This lady could have made the Skin Hers almost proud in hell, as the caustic was slowly dissolving the skin, making like she was ripping the skin layer by layer, like if she used a white-hot peeler. A white-hot peeler that never stopped, and that was slowly, very slowly burning each layer of her skin, in one of the most vicious way possible. She thought she had plunged people through horror? No, horror had just begun for her.

Such blunt questioning indeed belonged to such uncivilized era. She had always tried to break the spirit with a bit more of subtlety. But this cruel lady didn't care about subtlety. Did she care when she slaughtered all her Töchtern in this horrible night? At least for them it was over, when for her it had only begun for a few minutes, and the pain was already unbearable.

"Soon, you'll scream for only one thing. Your death." Iskanda asserted, knowing that any sane person, and even insane ones, would crack under such pain. Even people enjoying a bit of pain wouldn't resist such treatment.

"What… do you … want to know." The Hexen managed to articulate at a great price of sufferance, between two wheezing, as she was trying to restrain herself from expressing her pain, but it was in vain, as her face was already a great wincing that would deserve to be featured into the next horror movies. But from her fear and pain, only more sweat was coming through her pores, only further dissolving the caustic in her raw flesh even more

"Simple. Tell me who set this whole thing and I will neutralize this caustic. But the further you'll wait and the further you'll suffer." She specified what she wanted to know. She doubted the allies were involved. Such display of cruelty, yet a very subtle one, was not something the Osean would do. But with North Belka and the allies having a common enemy, what could emerge from such hatred? Only some kind of false alliance based on hatred that would be the downfall for the few idealist allies, if there was still a bit of them amongst the allied forces. Was she an idealist?

"I… won't…" She tried to block the pain but could restrain a high pitch scream of sufferance the next second.

"I didn't hear with the scream. Maybe a bit more caustic to clean this impurity out of your body will untie your tongue." Iskanda knew the Mutter was approaching the breaking point. All clues were here: the hesitant speech, the shattering members and hands, the thick cold sweat that was running on her foreskin, the arrhythmic breathing, all things were here. Soon, the mind would break. She didn't need to use fancy chemicals and theatrics like these Hexen. Raw pain was enough to rule them all. No one could survive such treatment and kept her sanity. She doubted than even her would survive such question.

Few minutes passed. Few minutes of pure pleasure for the Erusean merc, that wasn't doing her job of arranging the meeting between the Hexen and God for their forgiveness very fast. But well, Gods could wait a few minutes, she guessed. And each minute passing was pure bliss, as it was only so good to see your executioner receive the whip from your own hands.

But for the Hexen, it was pure horror. Sure, she had read the report that their spy within the Osean Intelligence Agency had sent about this strange Erusean merc. Obviously, she hadn't expected to see her banging at her door tonight, slaughtering her Töchtern after having surely and mercilessly slaughtered the guards. She had read the reports about her "questioning" of this Belkan ace. Back then, she thought she was using more theatrics and deception than true questioning that belonged to uncivilized age before the age of human rights. But who was she to talk about the respect of human rights, her who reveled into breaking the very human spirit of her victims?

After more time than when she had threatened the Belkan ace with the false nitrogen, she finally had the satisfaction to see the Hexen broke, physically and mentally. Her tears of pain, as she cried from the horrific sufferance that she just bore for maybe a quarter of hour, had come to an end, having cried so much that her eyes were dry by now. Her hairs were wet from the sweat coming at her forehead, and her chest was a very bloody paint of white and red, the white being the spot where the caustic had gone until the subcutaneous fat. Following some screams of pain as the merciless mercenary added even more caustic on her open wounds, she was completely out of breath, which caused a bit of false compassion from the Erusean-originated mercenary:

"Oh, please, do not choke while screaming. I would lose my source of Intel."

"I'm done screaming. I… will … talk." She articulated with even more pain than last time. Her face was now as distorted by pain. She might have been a good model for a female faceless version of Darth Vader by now. And a very realistic one, for sure.

"Gut. Wer? (Good, Who?)"

"Herr… Doktor... Schröder… Künstliche Intelligenz (AI) Projekt…" She tried to explain, but her words were interrupted so much by her arrhythmic breathing that was only a deaf wheezing by now, and her small scream of pain she was expressing from time to times, that her speech was only partially comprehensible.

"Eine Nahmen war genug (A name was enough). Now, as Herr Brønsted would do, lets neutralize this caustic with..." She let her the very uneasy surprise to be riddled, but apparently her victim's mind was now in such a state that she couldn't understand what Iskanda was implying.

"Was?" She asked, thinking that her sufferance was finally over. When obviously they weren't a single bit.

"An acid obviously. I could have chosen to go with nitric acid, but I don't want to poison myself with dinitrogen, and so it's better to use simple Oleum." Iskanda let the surprise unfolded, knowing very well that neutralizing a hard alkaline with a hard acid wouldn't do well on raw charred flesh.

"Oleum?" The Mutter repeated, not knowing this word precisely. That was no counter-poison she knew of.

"Concentrated sulfuric acid. It's astonishing the numbers of chemicals they were keeping in that old security station. Quite convenient I would say so." She revealed the second chemicals she was ready to unleash on the defenseless body of the Mutter.

Obviously, she didn't have to wait that much to see the results: a bit of vapor was unleashed as the two opposite pH were neutralized. She knew very well that reaction to be exothermic. She hadn't remembered that much things about chemistry from her years of lycée at Farbanti. But what she remembered had great and painful practical applications. Great only from her point of view. Of course, this point of view wasn't shared by the Mutter a single bit, as she screamed to the top of her lung as her skin was burning her like if someone abandoned her in a UV tube to burn.

Besides, the two chemicals weren't perfectly neutralized, and even if they were on the opposite spectrum of a pH-meter, they had similar effect on skin. They would both burn it and cause unbearable sufferance for the Hexen. Hexen that had now realized that this girl was just not a warrior, but an executioner and an inquisitor doing Hexenjagd as well. And all three aspect of this woman were as merciless and without hesitation as the others

"You… were … right… Kill me… I can't stand the pain…" The Hexen admitted that what Iskanda had said to be true: know she wanted one thing, her death to come, and to be as swift and painless as possible. Sadly for her, she wasn't expecting that from such a woman that had gone to such extent to torture her next one.

"Any last words for me?"

"I… was the one … who killed Krysta… she didn't break…" She confessed her other crime, the horrific murder of Krysta Kupchenko, that wasn't maybe that horrifying compared to her own murder she was seeing coming at Mach 1 at least.

"Hoch Interessant. It might be useful." She was now understanding who the real master of this dangerous woman she just annihilated was. She wasn't especially loyal to the Rald Partei. Only to this Schröder that had created these drones she had dispatched with ease every time she engaged them, over Valais, over B7R and over the Schayne Plains. Even in the Griffon she could beat them. Kupchenko's Projekt on the other hand had beaten her quite a few times lately, even if she had fought back too. So, Osea wasn't behind the tragedy of Kupchenko's relative, after all. Only the jealousy of one man who couldn't agree that someone had beaten him and was now having all the praises.

Even if Kupchenko wasn't that much praised lately with the secession of the CSB. Still, he had created the Wunderwaffe, not this Schröder that only had his drone shredded. That could be an interesting thing to talk about the next time he and her would try not to kill each other at Mach 1 or 2.

But right now, Iskanda had lifted the last chemical she was going to use, the one with which all the worries of the Hexen would disappear. As they would disappear forever too. She only had a few more lines to toss to make the Hexen look even weaker than Weeker, and she would be done here.

"Wie... haben wir … gescheitert? (how did we fail)" The Mutter inquired, this being her final request before her death. Death that she wanted to come fast, but it wasn't coming that fast. And both chemicals were still burning her charred skin.

"Wir schauten beide in den Abgrund. Aber als es auf uns zurück schaute… Du hast gezögert. Ich nicht." (We both looked into the abyss. But when it looked back at us… You blinked… I did not.) Iskanda drew the line between her and the witch. She had been afraid to end her when she was defeated once. She was arrogant and reluctant. Such arrogance had caused the loss of two ADFX-01 Morgans to Kupchenko. In the end, it could make all people crumble, feel weak and force them to their knees where they would wait for the executioner to kill them.

"Es … stimmt. Wir kosteten … das Vergessen … und ... es ertränkte uns (That make sense. We tasted oblivion and it drowned us)." The Hexen accepted that she had failed. Deep down, she had already concluded that there was no hope of redemption for her nor any of her Töchtern. She wasn't like Zubov who could always hope to have a chance to set things right. He was lucky to have such a Chance, infinitesimally more than she was right now.

Her only hopes for a quick and painful death, the only hopes she had still left in this place of despair that the Verzweiflungsberg was, were utterly shattered when she saw Iskanda opening two five-liter bottles of some other chemicals. But this time, the bottles were made of metal. They didn't seem pressurized, though. However, the fire danger icon, pictured as a black flame in a slightly turned red square, didn't let many doubts on her short-term future.

"Acetone. Very flammable. And with a very nice fruit smell." She introduced the product what would cause their death. Eternal hell was their destination, and they would go by burning in a very realistic hell.

She then switched off the lights and began spreading acetone everywhere. Its strong smell was partially replacing the one of blood, flesh and sweat that had filled the cave after her fight. As she was soaking the clothes of the Hexen with this chemical, the Mutter understood what she was up to. Still, she did wonder to verify this terrible hypothesis:

"Was… machst du (What are you doing)?"

"You see, in the past eras, Eruseans had a funny process to deal with witches. First, they would drown them, and if they didn't sink it would mean that the devil was helping them. Since the Löre is a bit far from here, and I have already drowned most of your followers in their own blood, I won't resort to this method. So, I will just go to the second step of this process: purification through fire." Iskanda explained, as she was emptying the second bottle of acetone. She finished the last deciliters on the Mutter, who was still unable to move. She wouldn't have to put it on the stairs. The vapors of the dissolved acetylene contained in the acetone would be enough to conduct the flame from the outside to the crypt.

"Was?" The Hexen shouted, having a bit of her spirit back since the end of the questioning. She shouted in horror, as she imagined herself surrounded by fire, and burning in an inferno. She had already been burned through acids and alkalis, but now she would be burned alive, and to her death. It was something she couldn't escape.

"Jedenfalls haben Sie einen schönen Scheiterhaufen (At least you have a nice stake)." Iskanda commented, as she was now leaving this place, and leaving these Hexen to their doom. At least three of them were still alive right now. These three unconscious ladies might get awoken by the burning heat, only to be killed by it. The ones that she had already killed could consider themselves lucky in comparison. Her, she had been lucky to find these few chemicals in an abandoned hangar, after she looted the security station. Sure, their presence was a bit too much of convenience, but she wouldn't go so far to split her hairs about their presence.

 **End of M rated part**

Then, she ascended the stairs for the last time. Even here, the vapor of acetylene had already filled the place. So, she had to remove Vasquez's motionless body from the bench. However, she put the three bodies of the guard inside. Of course, they weren't as guilty as the Hexen in the act of horrors they committed, but they had been obstacles on her path. And anything on her path to Victory needed to be removed and pushed aside, even if it was for these men to fall in hell.

She put Vasquez on the parvis, her back leaning against some tree. Maybe she had heard the scream of horror of the Hexen as she questioned her, even from up there. Or she would hear their screams of ultimate sufferance as they would join hell together. What she would think of her didn't matter to the now Ustian mercenary. What had mattered today was her survival, and above all her victory. If she could have some cam on her, she would have tried to immortalize this fight. This was something she would gladly live once more time, will it be in her dreams, or through another slaughter of her adversaries. It really felt so good doing the wrong thing. Was it the wrong thing anyway? Morally yes. On a pure tactical standpoint, freed of the shackles of morality, this seemed to be allowed. Sure, she hadn't act in self-defense, but proactive self-defense that would spare the life of many to come, that those Hexen would not take in the future.

A few second after she ended up her inner dithering, she threw the ignited lighter of the Hexen, inside the church, while shouting to the top of her lungs:

"Burn, witches!" Were the best words she could come up with. Sure, there was another word beginning by b and finishing by itches, but for once she would stay polite

The flame quickly grew to an inferno of bright red, orange and bluish colors in a very nice ochre palette, depending of the heat of the flames. At some time, she would just see a bright white, when the temperature was becoming too high, and was almost hurting her eyes that had gotten used to night vision. The dark place was illuminated for some minutes, as the terrible mixture of acetone and acetylene burned everything inside. From the empty windows, the light could be seen, flashing outwards. From the parvis, she only saw the bodies of the guards being turned to ashes, but she was sure that the Hexen had met the same fate, since she had sprayed much more of her flammable mixture down there. There, the white rocks wouldn't be red, but black and grey from the ashes of their incinerated bodies. The fire of revenge was destroying and would destroy everything inside. Through fire and iron, this place had been cleansed, she commented.

She heard some screams of pain, horrifying and frightening screams. Some normally constituted human would have felt some sweat running through her backs or would have felt a chill in their spine as they would have heard these. But not her. To her, they were only a choral of damned celebrating her victory of today. Like them, she just tasted oblivion. But it didn't drown her. She had survived a very near-death situation today. And was pretty about it. After all, she threw that lighter laughing to the top of her lungs and didn't stop until the final flame was extinguished.

Then she left for the ULM, still carrying the motionless Sapin on her back. A few minutes later, and she was gone, having found a way to put her in the small cockpit, but having to sit on Vasquez's lap. Now, she had triumphed over despair in Verzweiflungsberg, and was hoping to get in Hoffnung before the allied lay waste there. Maybe she could change things there. Maybe she could offer this oncoming battle another end, a better end, like Kellerman had suggested.

 **End of chapter.**  
 **I'm quite surprise with the length I managed to pull out with this one, given the fact that there's not that much of flight time here. I have put some M rating warning since this chapter compensate the lack of bloody close-quarter dogfight by a bloody close-quarter hand fight, not at Mach 2 but in some crypt. I hope I won't hurt the sensibility of anyone here. I tried to stay crude but not gore, not going into gore but in the depiction of the feelings of the ones involved in this chapter. If too much people think I should get into M rated, I might consider doing it. Otherwise I won't.**  
 **Even if our Herr Denker wasn't here, I did insert a bit of philosophical thoughts here. Maybe you can figure out from which movie I took inspiration for them.**  
 **Of course, her fights are not over for the day. One could find she find a bit too much of equipment in this abandoned base, but who I am to question the logistics of the Belkan army? Or is it just luck? Does she believe in luck, anyway? That's a good question, for another time I believe.**  
 **On a side note, next chapter will finally have some dogfight in it, after these three chapters without much flight time (beside with the ultralight).**  
 **It is said that the Belkan war was a dark shrouded period of history, if we follow the speech of Brett Thompson. And it only will become darker and darker until light cast out the shadow.**  
 **I Hope everyone is fine (about the whole covid-19 thing). Me I have to do online lessons, and sometimes the software aren't the best choices from my teachers.**  
 **Feel free to review, comment, favor… Und bis nächst Mal, Lesern und Leserinnen.**


	23. Chapter 121: Operation Cannibal 1 part1

**Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:30, Weather: little night fog.**

She had hoped to enter in the airspace of Hoffnung without being detected this early. She was seeing rows of civilian and transport jet leaving the city, either for the West or for the North, from the rows of green and red lights gliding in the far away sky. Most of them were going for the West, shepherd by some fighters. She needed no radar to see them, only her eyes and the lights on the planes were enough to spot them.

She had just gone above the valley's limit around Hoffnung, after having flown from the abandoned base in the Verzweiflungsberg when she saw two F-35s heading for her. Aircraft that she considered as weak after having downed several of them above B7R. But compared to an ULM, even the old propeller planes, and even biplanes were more powerful.

She had thought this ULM was stealthy enough to move a bit around undetected. But even in the night, such plane with a basic metallic structure was fairly visible for the military grade radar onboard those craft. Or she has been spotted through some PM radar, or even by the Merlin satellites. Which could make sense, since Kupchenko had surely many systems and parts produced in the factories of Hoffnung. The factories around the Wunderwaffe were already of a big size, but they were might be meant for maintenance and repairs.

And of course, since she hadn't any onboard radio, she couldn't hear the chat between the two Belkan pilots. As they went even closer, she could hear their engine, very loud from a plane without pressurized canopy. She could also saw their camouflage, a black one with yellowish fluorescent bands, making them flash a bit in the night, but only on a very slight scale.

"What should we do about this ultralight? Warning shots?" Donner three asked to this wingman, Donner eight. It was the first time he had to intercept such kind of plane. They were pretty tired, between the escort for the civilian jets

"Even warning shots could injure whoever's flying this craft in a future war zone. Let's guide them to a landing zone and ask about her whereabouts." He suggested, knowing that even the shrapnels of a warning shot could damage such fragile airplane. But he was a bit surprised by the look of it, as it had no propellers but a strange electrical ring that was producing the thrust. This wasn't the usual ULM, he knew it. And its pilot was no usual person, he was certain of that.

"Ver. Follow us." Donner 3 agreed and began to roll a bit leftward and then rightward, shaking his wings to make the ULM understood it. He wasn't supposed to be that visible in the sky at night, but there was a clear moon this night, and he didn't know of the IR goggles the pilot was equipped with. Which obviously could see very well his engine glowing in the dark like a powerful flashlight.

"The pilot must have understood." Donner 8 commented, looking backward, as he saw the ULM rolling a bit, shaking his wing following the international code.

"Well, wait for me at the Landebahn (runway). I will guide her below the current civilian traffic. ID set as neutral." Donner 3 added, and slow down as much as he could in order not to lose the propeller plane. So, he was doing small back and return flights, as the ULM was a tortoise. He agreed his F-35 was not the fastest plane in the world, even some third and fourth generation plane could match its speed easily. Yet, the small sharklets they implemented on their aircraft allow them to have a lower stall speed than the Osean F-35s, and their X-shaped empennage was quite helpful in boosting their overall mobility.

This last part of her ULM flight was pretty boring. She would follow this F-35X for a few minutes, flying above the large residential area that were plunged into darkness. She wouldn't see any lights from vehicles nor city lights, outside of military vehicles. Maybe the civilian had already been evacuated. She hoped so, as Hoffnung was a city counting almost a million of inhabitant. If it was bombed without evacuation by the Belkans, the losses would be in the tens of thousands or even in the hundreds of thousands.

Then, she would fly over the over numerous factories that boarded the Löre river, with the river being often used to cooled down some parts. These rivers in industrial cities were almost dead ones, due to overheating. When it was not due to water pollutions. She thought she would have felt the fumes or smell them. But many factories seemed to be working, and when she took a look at them with her IR goggles, she saw only cold chimney from which vapors would pour and filled the air all over the city. Maybe some of these factories were being transferred, only leading to more cargo planes needing to be used for this matter.

At some point she flew over two bridges that connected the two sides of the city, after having lunged the rows of cylindrical fuel tanks. There, vehicles could be seen. That appeared to be trapped in traffic jams. If the allied wanted to create mayhem, there would be no easiest way than to strike at these traffic jams. Death would be quite high if they resort to such options.

And finally, after more than ten minutes, she had arrived at the military airport of Hoffnung, who was also swarm with transport crafts and smaller fighters. It was a four-lane airport, surrounded by warehouses and with a control tower as big as the bell tower of Ste Victoire's cathedral in Directus, housing almost as much radar. It looked like someone had taken the isle of a carrier and had put it here. The two main lanes were used for the transport crafts, who would land, and take-off shortly after, filled with military supplies for who… maybe for the CSB, she guessed. Hoffnung's industries were the most engaged in the Pendragon Projekt. They had maybe more than commercial ties to it. The other Easter one was used for the fighter jets.

The first F-35X that she had seen had his gear lowered and had switch on his lights. He flew by the fourth runway, signaling her that she was clear to land. If she had some radio, she would have surely heard some "Landeklar" (clear to land). But here she could only land on sight, which was pretty difficult. And it was even more difficult due to the turbulences induced by the transport doing back and forth travels around her. In a fighter she would have no worries about it, but now she had to be a bit more cautious.

In the end, she succeeded in her landing. Even if she was badly shaken, the shock dampeners of the light wheels of this ULM being not that strong. And she had more weight than the last time onboard. She didn't know what these Belkans would do of her. Right now, what she would want them to do would be to let her sleep for a couple of hours. Despite having been near the overdose level of adrenaline, she was not quite tired. The F-35X landed behind her with what seemed to be amazing ease compared to her poorly executed landing. And even them taxiing next to her was enough to shake her fragile plane due to the vibration in the ground.

 **Bienenstock (beehive) Airbase, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 00:30, Weather: little night fog.**

The two pilots were already on their way to her ULM than she hadn't left the canopy. And they weren't alone, some Belkan soldiers were with them as well. She understood their suspicion, showed evidently by the war rifles they were carrying. She stepped out of the canopy with care, leaving momentarily Vasquez inside -to be honest she had not the strength to carry her out of the open cockpit right now-. A strange thing that happened was that she had the feeling to be still in flight. She was feeling a bit dizzy, like if she was drunk.

Of course, they didn't recognize her at first glance. But she could recognize very well at their slightly startled faces that the blood now covering her suit was bothering them a bit. She hadn't gotten her suit soaked with blood like last time before she arrived at Valais, but she had quite a lot on her, which was understandable due to the number of people she had killed this night: sixteen. A bit of blood had been shed on the Sapin pilot during the slaughter of the Hexen, but for now it wasn't visible was she laid in the ULM.

"Wer bist du?" One of the two Belkan pilot asked, not recognizing the mercenary at first glance, especially in that kind of suit. She would have been recognized, if she still wore her Galm 1 insignia. Even if she hadn't been flying under that name for a while.

"I ...am..." She began to talk, then suddenly crumpled where she was currently standing. The adrenaline she had injected herself with had managed to counter the effect of the Kalium chloride for a time, but it hadn't been rejected of her system. A portion of it might have bee, through the sweat during her fight, but it was not enough. And if adrenaline had been enough to give her the willpower, it hadn't provided any energy to her own body. She had actually been pretty lucky not to collapse before she land, or this last ULM flight would have been her very last flight, literally speaking.

The closest pilot quickly stepped forward, catching her in time, preventing her to fall toward the ground. She didn't seem to be severely hurt despite all the blood on her, but it was only from the outside.

"Ruf einem Medic. Schnell. Wie ist die andere? (call a medic, quick. How is the other one?)" He ordered to the soldier standing beside him, still holding the unknown person, and asked for the state of the passenger of the ULM. He was wondering how they managed to fit in such a tiny canopy. But from the look of the first one, he could guess that such concern hadn't be the highest ones on her list.

"lebt und atmet (alive and breathing). Aber sie scheint eingeschlafene. (but she seemed to be sleeping)." Donner 8 got a look at the sleeping pilot. But this face was remembering him of something. Of someone he had seen a few times in the hangar, as they had to wait there sometimes before going on escort missions. And at the Sapin insignia he saw when the soldiers move her out of the canopy, he understood who this one was. But that couldn't help them deduce the identity of the other one a single bit.

"Gustav, this one is the overseer Kupchenko sent about the power source parts. She went missing yesterday and we couldn't find her anywhere in the goddam city." He reported to Donner 3 as he joined with him, while the two unconscious women were set up on stretchers.

"Ja, du stimmt, Helmut. So die Pilote ist vielleicht eine andere Pendragon Projekt Person." Gustav emitted what was obviously a very false guess. Of course, he had no way to quickly verify what he was implying, and his theory was the one making more sense, so they chose to stick with it. Maybe their IT technicians would find something either in their files or in the allied defectors -since there was already a small number of allied defectors in the ranks of the Pendragon Projekt-. And with Osea having no equivalent of the Schwarze team, this number could and would only grow in the coming weeks.

Both of these women would have the luck to get some rest due to their current state. Rest that was quite rare in these situations. These two Belkan pilots knew it was rare, as they had had only a few hours of rest per days since the beginning of the evacuation of Hoffnung. Obviously, since the announcement of the secession, quite a lot had already been done, but there was still a lot to finish, before they could basically turned Hoffnung into a trap that would swallow all allied forces trying to invade it.

 **Bienenstock Airbase, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 10:30, Weather: little night fog.**

This time, her sleep was a good half-night of rest. Not a very short time of paradoxical sleep filled with mortuary apparition. It was almost strange for her to have undergone such brutal slaughter, and then to was able to sleep like an innocent people. Dead rarely haunted her, because what could be haunting her in the end? Only cinders were left of those Hexens by now. And cinders wouldn't do anything to her.

When she woke up, it wasn't because of some adrenaline surge, pain, or anything that she had suffered this night. What caused her to wake up was simply the warmth of the room in an unknown building she was laying right now, caused by the sun. And she had doubted that she would saw another sunrise the last night, when she had had to experience this almost-dead state. She would never let anyone get so close to kill her, she swore.

Still, someone had changed her clothes while she was sleeping. Gone were her thick suit, and she was only wearing a hospital gown, this thin clothe of light blue cotton. Of course, they had removed her jade harpoon, maybe to prevent her from hurting herself with the barbs on it. But what she noticed the most, and right away, was a pretty big wound dressing all other a small portion of her left forearm. She hadn't remember having been hurt there. Besides, this kind of dressing was making her think more of the ones she had when she would go to give her blood, back in Erusea. At least, she could say she had saved twelve life -they said you were saving three by giving your blood once, and she gave hers four times-.

But as soon as she was awake, she wasn't let idle more than thirty seconds. Two pilots barged into the room, in which she was alone. Apparently, they had moved Vasquez to another single room, maybe. At their shoulder patch, which was made of a fluorescent lightning in a dark circle, she guessed these might be the pilots that had intercepted her last night. They didn't seem that threatening, these Belkans might have better intent than the Osean commandos she had to slaughter a few weeks ago, and obviously far better intent than the Hexen.

"Well, you're quick to wake up. For someone that had to undergo through a dialysis while sleeping. He's Gustav and I'm Helmut. Forget him if he's not verbose, he's not found of strangers." The one with brown her said, which caused an unfunny glare from his colleague that had his hair cut so short that she had a bit of trouble figuring out their color.

"So, now that you're awake, I'll repeat my question : who are you?" Gustav said, in a somewhat cold manner, ignoring if he could trust this woman that had appeared out of the blue on their radar.

She could say many things right now. Galm 1 was one of the few, but she dismissed it. Her true name was another one, but these two pilots would be wary of someone with a not very Belkan-sounding name. Besides, her name had maybe gone over the borders by now, due to the number of Belkan she had killed in combat. So, she decided to stick with the nickname she had come out when asked by Netz leader. She hoped that her little act of folly above Tauberg had been too spread by Kupchenko. Maybe he didn't, not wanting to admit the losses of two ADFX-01 to the allied forces, that could think that the Pendragon Projekt could be defeated then.

"Schwarze Luchs." She replied with confidence.

"Schwarze Luchs? I heard about you, weren't you lost from the radars after some battle over B7R?" Gustav showed again his suspicion toward this mysterious woman. He didn't remember who had spoken of that pilot, but this person had bragged about the fact that she was worth in her killing spree.

"I did suffer a slight structural damage that resulted in some precarious landing." She half lied, her fist slightly clenched around her cover. It wasn't a full lie because she did suffer structural damage after this battle, but way more than what she was asserting right now. Same for the landing, it had been more than precarious. Landing with a chute was not a very good landing in her books.

"Gut. Maybe we should get her to the mess hall, so we can patch her about the current situation, and you'll be able to eat a little?" Helmut proposed, being a bit more open than his colleague. The fact that she had brought back the envoy of Kupchenko was enough to trust her for him. He trusted people on acts rather than facts. Gustav did too, but he might be waiting to see her act in the sky rather than talk her way out of the situation on the ground.

To this invitation her stomach was the first to respond with a small growl. Which she summed up with this sentence:

"That would be a pleasure. I had quite a busy night, and the who sleep eats proverb doesn't seem to apply to me."

"Will you need some help getting up?" Helmut asked her nicely, having some concerns about her health. Even if these concerns were based on what the doctors reported him, and if everything had followed their mind, this girl shouldn't have woken up before the afternoon.

"Nicht. I should be fine. I'm starving, but not in hypoglycemia." She specified, knowing that even if she had satisfied her thirst for blood last night, she had her throat a bit sore since she hadn't drunk a lot recently. Obviously, her throat was less sore than the ones of the Hexen she pierced.

"So Verfolg uns, miss." Gustav responded a bit more coldly, again. Were they playing some sort of good cop / bad cop thing to make her talk? Such hypothesis could be true or false. Still, she was expecting a bit more of cunningness from Belkans.

She managed to stand up despite her state of tiredness, and follow both pilots, wearing only her hospital gown over her undergarments. They had not removed the fabric band she wore to make her look like a man. When would she remove it, herself was a good question. Maybe when someone would see her as a woman and not an emotionless matricidal slaughtering-lover monster, and share some interest, she would. Until then she saw no reasons to recreate her old self she had buried after her first slaughter, now a few years ago.

The lunch was quite welcome by the hungry merc. Sure, Kellerman had managed to bring back some more food during her little absence, but it wasn't that much. She had indeed had a somewhat hard life and wasn't used to have three-courses meal every day, but there was nothing more satisfying than a good meal after a good night. It would have been perfect if all of this was in peace time and that she wasn't talking with people that she might have murdered some far away relatives during her career with the allied forces.

But then she was met with reality as she was resting after the lunch, at ease physically but not entirely psychologically speaking. They were wary of her, and she was as much wary of them as well. She might have scored good point by saving Vasquez but barging here covered in blood in wartimes was not the best thing to do. And she hadn't solved the mystery of this wrist dressing.

"What happened to you?" "What happened to my wrist?" The merc and Donner 3 asked at the same time.

"About your wrist, they had to do some dialysis to clean your blood. They said you were under the effect of some poison." Helmut aka Donner 8 replied, again surprised that this girl survived such treatment.

"I see. That's a good thing. About me… I'm not sure you want to know." She was a bit reluctant to talk about what she performed last night. It wasn't cold blood murder but more of a boiling blood murder. Then inhuman treatment as repayment of her own, extraction of some intel through their thine own flesh, and a bit of arson. For this last crime, she could always try to say that an allied plane had dropped some napalm bombs in the vicinity.

"Was passiert?" Donner 3 insisted, frowning and his wariness toward this "Schwarze Luchs" lady growing further.

"You see, sometimes people play witch and wizard and simply go ask for treats. But these persons that I met yesterday were a bit tricky than that. Let's just say that their spell backfired." She wanted to stay elusive on her close past, or at least wait a bit until unfolding the whole story. These Hexen were without any doubt not loved in Belka for their acts, since they had the same reputation than The Vulture.

"Was meinst du mit Hexen (what do you mean with witches)?" Donner eight wanted some more details too. This name was not fully unknown to him, he had heard some high-ranking discussed about a group of women named as such. This discussion was a very heated one, if he remembered well. Well, it had been a very heated one since it was one of the few times that the Pendragon and the Künstliche Intelligenz Projekt had tried to talk their way out of their disparities to act jointly over Wesson. And due to the Dolch firing on some of the DW-1s by mistake, it had been the last time too.

"Die "HEXEN". Und jetzt müssen sie zur Höhle ankommen (THE "HEXEN". And know they must have arrived in hell)." Iskanda emphasized the word designating the thirteen person she killed only ten hours ago. She hoped her last sentence was explicit enough to make them understand what she had done with them yesterday. Or she could always try to intimidate them by telling them they could be her seventeenth and eighteenth Belkan kills on the ground, but she might want not to go to such extent here.

"Ich… Vielleicht du stimmst, werde ich nicht mehr hören (I … maybe you're right, I don't want to hear any more on them.)." Donner 3 settled to stop this talk, or at least steer the talks in another way, which Iskanda did the next second.

"Und, how's the evacuation going?" She tried to show some interest to the becoming of this city. City of Hope, which was the last hope for some Belkans. Maybe it was her last hope to change something too, in the end.

"Almost the nine tenth of the inhabitants are evacuated, and almost as much of the necessary items for the Projekt have been shipped as well." Helmut began to describe the somewhat good advancement of the shipment. Still, there was still a good hundred thousand people left to evacuate, and no Belkans wanted those hundred thousand inhabitants to turn into one hundred thousand civilian losses. Such high numbers of losses would not even the losses with Osea. Total losses of the EMP disaster and subsequent replica, crashes due to Merlin disturbing shipment of munitions and fuel, and local disaster instilled by the EMP disaster such as the flooding of Burgen, had reached the hundred thousand losses. Osea was not bloodless, but they had quite nasty wounds, which seemed to have trouble cicatrizing.

"Helmut, we aren't supposed to talk about that to foreigners…" Gustav's glare grew a bit angered toward his wingmen who was trusting too easily this still unknown lady.

They might have talked for quite some times about the city. They surely would have, and maybe they would have tried to investigate more on the events of this night, if it wasn't for a pretty high-pitch alarm that rezoned into the whole mess hall, wrecking a bit the sensible ears of Iskanda.

"What should we do with her?" Gustav was a bit reluctant to let some unknown wander around, and for good reasons. If someone had managed to rapt Vasquez in the middle of Hoffnung, they had to raise their wariness. Obviously, she was the one that brought Vasquez back, and not the other way around.

"You're a fighter pilot, right?" Helmut checked an obvious assertion.

"Natürlich." Iskanda nodded, almost reading where he was heading.

"If you survived B7R, then you should be helpful up there. Ask for a uniform at the logistics, first barrack on your right." He sent her on her way to very likely join her in the defense of Hoffnung. Gustav said nothing, only shrugged and sighed heavily as they left for the briefing room.

"You wanted to see if she's worth your trust in the sky. So, I'm giving a chance to do so." Helmut justified his proposal as they were walking toward the said room.

"It's not what I wanted to do as first… But this way I'll have an eye on her in the sky." Gustav had to concede they needed all the help they could get. Half of the Donner squad was not in the vicinity, as they were protecting the shipping lane between Hoffnung and Blumenberg.

For Iskanda, it was a short run. They were a bit doubtful to see a girl in hospital gown asking for a uniform, but they gave her anyway. It was almost the same Pixy gave her at Valais when they first met. Which was comprehensible, since Ustio was still using a lot of Belkan hardware due to the temporal proximity of their secession. Now, she just wanted another thing, her jade harpoon, but she had no idea who had it at this time. It was something she would need to ask to these two pilots that seemed to almost mothball her. Or were they just very wary of her? Gustav surely was, but Helmut was a bit more open-minded.

It was a slightly longer run to find the briefing room, which was at the second underground level, maybe in case of bombing. It was a bit longer due to the lift being occupied when she wanted to use it, so she descended the staircase with three stairs in one step. This time she wasn't caring about the drama like she cared when she was descending in that crypt. And the shoes pilots wore were definitively more fitting than heavy iron-sole ones.

 **Briefing Room, Bienenstock Air Base, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 11:00, Weather: overcast.**

She barged into the room a bit awkwardly, earning a death glare from the officer currently doing the briefing. Officer whose name was not unknown to her. It was none other than Pixy's former base commander, Oswin Neugel. Why was he leading the evacuation effort in Hoffnung when his base was in the North near Dinsmark was a startling her a bit, but she would leave these concerns for later. A simple Belkan order directing her to sit down and listen and the briefing started again.

"Donner 4,5,6 and seven, your sector is the south. Donner 3 and eight, and Fraulein "Schwarze Luchs", you'll patrol the North. These are the only point to enter the valley. If the allied forces try to go above, they will get splashed by our anti-air if they go above the valley's limit."

"What can we expect?" Donner 5, the only women of the squad, a thirty-years-old with short red hairs, asked. She too had looked at the new pilot with curiosity, as well as the other Donner squad members. Some showed more animosity than curiosity, and for their it seemed to be the other way around.

"Anything, from both the allied forces and the Rald-led North Belka." Oswin described what they could engage, as the Belkan mapping system was showing them their area above the croissant-shaped valley of Hoffnung, which was indeed well covered by radars. The only entrance point were the North and the South. At the South, they would be against the allied forces, mostly, and at the North against the North Belkans. But in both case the situation could be inverted, as Oswin dwelled a bit more in the explanation of the pretty messed up current situation.

"The Rald have authorized the allied to fly above Facto and even their own territories to bomb us. As such, expect heavy deployment of any kind of forces both at the North and the South. Stealth can be expected, but I'm not expecting F-22 nor YF-23s right now." Oswin was pretty angry to see that instead of the Belkans banding together to counter the allied forces, it was the opposite that was being enacted right now: two enemies with the only common point was to hate Kupchenko and his project of a new Belkan state possessing a Wunderwaffe would join their forces. What could such alliance based on hatred give? Nothing good was the answer. Yuktobania and Osea had once banded together to defeat Belka in the 1940's, yet it was only to be at odds for the decades to come in the Cold War period.

"That's pathetic." Iskanda dared to comment this really messed-up situation. The CSB was at the center of this war now, surrounded by adversaries on all sides. And these adversaries that a few days ago were only wanting to annihilate each other were now all joining together to annihilate this new third party. She was forced to admit that Kupchenko had quite a lot of influence to achieve such results on people.

"Donner 3 and 8, you'll give her the third replacement craft. That'll be all." Oswin ended this briefing, and as such, the program was put offline, ending the briefing

"Ver." Gustav nodded, ready to engage whoever would cross their sky, will it be former brother-in-arms brainwashed by propaganda or allied pilots brainwashed by their so-called "idea of universal freedom".

They all left the room, but Iskanda stayed a bit behind, wanting to know where her stuff was. And she knew how to get fine with the present commander.

"Pixy spoke highly of you, Herr Neugel." She quoted his former student he once was in charge off.

"How do you know about him? And how do you know about this link?" Were his two questions than her assertion raised. Maybe her tactic wasn't that good. And now she was the one that needed to answer to questions when she wanted to be the one asking for a bit of intel.

"I have my sources. And I prefer to protect them." She answered, not satisfying a single bit the Belkan commander, who only raised his eyebrows as well as his suspicion.

"I'm happy he's alive. I would like to have him fighting for the motherland, though." Oswin expressed the bit of regret to know that one of his best elements was fighting against Belka. Yet, Pixy didn't join the allied just to fight Belkans, but what Belka had become since he left with this merc to live a more heated life.

"People change, sometimes." She added, knowing that she had herself changed quite a lot in these last weeks. What was she now? And why was she still fighting were two good questions she still had to answer, but not right now.

"Whatever. But from what I can tell, you want to ask me something. So sprichst, Fraulein." He had read her intention a thousand miles ago and might have a good assumption about what she was going to ask.

"Where is my harpoon?" She wanted to have her stuff back. It wasn't that it had an intrinsic valor by itself, but its sentimental valor was meaningful to her.

"Ah, that flesh and blood-soaked blade you were wearing like some kind of strange jewelry? It must have been sent to the logistics." His answer almost made her die from laugh. She had just been to the logistics a few minutes ago. But they might not know she was the owner of this weapon.

"Jetzt, go. join Donner 3 and 8 and make use your skills that allowed you to survive above B7R." He ordered her, rendering the urgency of the situation by a hand gesture directing her to go join them ASAP. She had never flown F-35s. They suffered quite a bad reputation due to some delays in the Osean program. But those Belkans -she had no idea how the Belkans managed to get their hands on the blueprints in the first place- might be better, since Belkan planes seemed always to have some little upgrades above the Oseans. It was understandable, when the latter would always try to use quantity over quality.

And after a few minutes of fast walk, and a few needed demands to find her way to their hangar, she found once more the two pilots that would be her unofficial wingmen for today. They were waiting outside their F-35X. Like in the sky, she could look for their disparities with the Osean variants. But there were a few disparities she hadn't seen that well last night. One of them was these small sharklets. She had already seen some on big crafts, but not on fighter jets. With these and vectored thrust, they might be better dogfighters than the baseline one, which had been outmatched by F-16Cs.

"This will be your jet for today. If you were able to fly a Su-47 you should have no problem with this craft." Helmut explained her, as he was putting his helmet on. His had the number eight painted with this light fluorescent paint on the back of his fuselage, written in Belkan as "acht". Gustave had the one marked with "drei". And her, she was apparently the number zehn -ten-.

"And is there some changes about the weaponry?" She wanted to know how far the Belkan changes had affected this plane and its capacities.

"Since we're mostly on anti-air, you'll have the standard missiles in the forward side-bays, the QAAMs in the central bay, as such if you fire them while turning belly toward the enemy jet you'll have no problem with the lock. And those stealth pods are not conformal fuel tanks but housings for XMAAs." Helmut described her weaponry, oriented toward interception purposes. They could carry some GPBs, but no big weapon for anti-armored units like Stand-Off Dispensers or Cruise missiles.

"Balanced at medium, but weak at long range." She pointed the obvious limitation of such bays, that did not offer enough rooms for LAGMs or XLAAs.

"Osea will not use long-range armament until they have clear shots. And with Excalibur, this delay will always increase. Good flight, Fraulein." Gustav's view of the Oseans was clearly biased, but he knew what he was speaking off. And the few stand-off cruise missiles they had tried to launch from Fato had been intercepted by the Merlin satellites. Hence why they would mostly use strike fighters and not bombers right now. Besides, if their SAM network was not perfect against fighters, it would surely score aces against Osean B-52s or Yukte Tu-95s. These planes were sturdy enough to fly through the plasma shutter of a Merlin satellite without risking to lose their engines, but they were easy to pick up and destroy.

 **North of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 11:20, Weather : overcast, medium cloud coverage.**

Her take off had been quite a smooth one. She thought it would lack a bit of power due to the F-35 being a single engine plane, but apparently these ones had their engine as powerful, if not more than her former and now gone X-29A. And the addition of this X-shaped empennage and canards allowed her to pull out an Himmelman to steer her aircraft northward. She definitively thought the F-35 was heavier than what she felt from its cockpit, especially with two additional weapon pods, that were giving it a pretty high number of special weaponry - ten QAAMs and three volleys of XMAAs from these weapon pods-.

"This F-35X is lighter than the ones I fought against in B7R." She shared her mind with the two other Donner squad members escorting her as they flew over some couples of fuel tanks in between some BAWS and SAMs had been deployed. It left them vulnerable if the fuel tanks were hit, but the good range of the BAWS could reduce this danger.

"It's because ours have a bit of carbon nanotubes in their structure. It's twice as strong as steel but five times lighter." Gustav replied, having no problem to follow their new unofficial squad members. All had reached Mach 1 pretty quickly.

"So, what's the deal with that harpoon you asked for to the commander? some kind of horseshoe?" Helmut asked, as they left the limits of the airspace covered by the SAM network of the city. Now they would be on their own. Or maybe the BAWS could still reach the enemies here, she wasn't sure of its range.

"Ja und Nein. It's a symbol of resilience to me. Of the flame of my will." She didn't want to talk about her past to unknown, but they could know about it. Not that it was covered with the dry blood of more than fifty person by now including her own mother.

"Interesting. What do you think the Osean will send?" Donner 3 asked, knowing that whatever it will be, they would be outnumbered. But not outmatched.

"I don't know. I doubt they would send F-117 above a denied battlespace. Their F-22 are not good strikers. Maybe some UCAVs to outnumber us?" Iskanda analyzed what she knew of the Osean arsenal. They wouldn't use B-2s for sure. They were far too slow to be able to avoid Helligen Kolumne. B-1s had surely been decimated after the losses above the Glatisant and the failed attack on the Wunderwaffe.

"I think you're right. I have a dozen of QF-4s and QF-16s. We need to go through her ranks, kill the leading craft and then finish the rest." Donner eight just saw quite a lot of spot entering on his radar.

"Donner 4, we have the same type of attack at the south. The defenses can handle them a bit. Destroy the E-6B Mercury covering them, and it will be just target practice." The other member at the South confirmed the current tactical choice of the allied forces. Which was quite poor against harden veterans.

"Use your XMAAs, these automated fighters are just good missile trucks." Donner 3 suggested, as he opened his bays and began locking on the QF planes.

"Ver. Fox 3!" She followed the order, and a dozen of the automated Ghosts were down with ease.

But in the meantime, the F-16Cs had advanced, and were at range to launch their XMAAs. Numerous volleys were fired toward the three fighters, but out of the blue the sky began to color in a pale violet colors, while small distorted lines of light appeared in midair. And most of the Osean XMAAs detonated on the plasma curtain.

"Damned, they activated their Merlin satellites, again! engage close combat mode." An Osean officer leading the E-6B was expressing his fury toward the much more potent Belkan counter. Sure, their onboard electronics could survive EMPs. But they wouldn't resist gunfire for a long time if they failed to down these fighters.

The curtain didn't last long. Its energy had decreased enough to allow all planes to fly through it, even if there was still a lot of EMI on their radars. Now they only had to down a bunch of useless drones. Maybe just taking half of it would be enough to have a clear path onto the enemy command plane, Iskanda guessed, as she was going head-on against four QF-16s. One tried to fire his XMAAs again, but they had poor close range mobility, and she was able to evade them by banking right hard. Which was made easy by the vector thrust. Then she took them down like she had seen Pixy proceed, even if she changed a bit his method of one gun kill, two QAAMs and a missile kill.

First, she evaded a pair of missiles coming from the one at the left, by doing a hard turn to the right. Then she executed an Herbert Manöver, not wanting to use her head-to-tail maneuver for two reasons : she didn't know of the mobility of her F-35X enough to try such, and she didn't wanted any pilots, would they be Belkan or those Osean far behind their monitors to recognize Galm 1's fighting style. But when she flew perpendicularly to the QF-16s, she opened her main bay and fired two QAAMs. That didn't miss. But the two others open fire with their gun, forcing her to flee in front of them. Standard missiles grazed her fighter as she was getting out of range and pulled out an Himmelman. The two Automated Fighting Falcons quickly pitched to counter her maneuver, but she dived below their line of fire. And as they had pitched a bit too quickly, they stalled slightly in doing so. She stalled too as she used her canard as air brakes to slow her motion right below them and dispatch one of them with her gun and the other with a pair of missiles. Still, her stall was perfectly in her control, thanks to the new stability permitted by the sharklets.

"Fancy flying." Gustav gauged, as he dispatched his opponents, beginning with the ones at the exterior of his four opponents' formation, with two missiles and one QAAM. He flew very close to the ground to avoid being fired upon, in this case flying over small meanders of the Löre above which there was some power line, which the QF-16s preferred to avoid by climbing a bit. And as the meanders was doing a 180-degree turn on the axis of his opponent, he followed it, flying so low that he created some trails on the water. And while the QF-16s were searching, he came from being and destroy the two of them through Schräge Musik.

"I might be fancy, but at least I'm not playing submarine." She retorted playfully, before going on the hunt for the E-6B. It was at the limit of their airspace, and she could see some other QF planes approaching on her Belkan radar, but they had to destroy it to hamper further drone deployment.

"I'm joining you right now." Donner 8 nodded with her intent to destroy their mothership. His manner of destroying his four targets was not fancy at all. He simply overrun them as they went head on, then pulled a fast 180 degree turn and fired his XMAAs. Sure, one managed to evade the volley, but he had bled speed as the operator twisted the drone like an eel. But a short gun burst was enough to down the other single-engine fighter.

"Donner 3 and eight, they have ten more QF-4. I entrust six of them to you. I'm going for the Mercury." She let them know, as she just fired her second volley of XMAAs. Numerous SAAMs followed as retaliation, but she had no trouble losing them as she flew vertically. She felt the plane struggle a bit to keep a bit its stability, more than she had with the Su-47, but there was glaring disparities between the two fighters.

"Ver." Donner eight agreed. He destroyed his enemy head-on, firing one missiles and one QAAMs on the ones at the side of the three drone formation, before barrel-rolling to evade the missiles of the one at the center, and gunned the last one from its one hours.

"And It was her who was supposed to follow our directives, not the other way around." Gustav silently thought, a bit surprised to see how fast this merc had assumed their command. She wasn't just a lonely predator like Luchs are. She had had already members under her leadership, he had no little doubt about it. But when? He left the question in suspense as he went for three QF-4s with two missile on the one at the left, and gunned a bit the other two craft, before firing a pair of QAAMs on the damaged craft, that tried to run, but couldn't match but redundant heat seekers of his missiles.

"I'm seeing the E-6Bs. But their jamming is quite strong. Let's try to do a without-lock kill." She described her situation, as she was climbing right in front of it. She eased up the throttle a bit, slowing her approach. And fired cautiously one missile inside the two left engines, firing the first quickly, then barrel-rolling to the left to get the second. The aircraft tilted heavily due to the sudden loss of thrust and the roll instability due to the throwback of the impact. She flew by over the damaged wing, before pulling a split-S toward the small radome at the top of the Mercury. It must be the housing for the jammer, as she was unable to lock it. But from such short distance, lock was no liability. She just fired two XMAAs that went right for the top of the fuselage, destroying the electronics in the radome, and creating a massive hole at the bottom of their fuselage. She saw crew members being pulled away as she overrun the EW plane, due to the air pressure at the exterior.

She finished the plane by firing straight at its cockpit, which caused the plane to fall very quickly. Maybe she had hit some controls, and it messed up their steering. Or the dying pilot had clenched his hand too hard on the control stick, and this resulted in this hard dive. A few minutes later, his remains would go straight into the Löre. Only a couple of chutes were sighted by the three pilots as they returned to the center of their CAP zone.

"Donner 4 to 3, we had similar assault ongoing right now. We should be able to hold. Keep your stance and listen to Herr Bürgermeister 's speech." The pilot at the South of Hoffnung indicated, as they were engaged with a pretty big swarm of MQ-9s. But they were winning undoubtedly, despite the waste of more than half of their XMAAs and QAAMs. There, it was a BAWS that destroyed the E-6B, with Donner 6 having some designation pods instead of the XMAAs pod, in order to ease stealth hunt.

"Ver. Set your frequency to 106.5 FM." He advised Schwarze Luchs, as she did not know of the Hoffnung radio station. Because they wouldn't use a military radio for such message. Theirs were put on alert mode, in case of any new allied aircraft showing up. And there eyes were still looking sharply at the horizon, ready to spot anything that would escape radar by flying at very low altitude.

"Setting radio to 106,5 FM" Iskanda nodded, and a few seconds afterwards, she began to hear some Belkan old voice. It had no commanding tone in it like Kupchenko, but it was still good to instill bravery in the heart of his citizens and of their soldiers, if they wanted to succeed in evacuating with minimal losses. There would be, she knew that. It would have taken her to fall to such depth to do what could be considered as nobility in fight: for the ones that cannot. And she was doing that for her former enemies. Or former adversaries, the line between was a bit vague sometimes.

"Hoffnungern und Hoffnungerinnen. Heute könnte der dunkelste Tag unserer Geschichte sein. Aber wir könnten nicht erlauben, unsere Hoffnung zu verschwinden. Unsere Hoffnung wird immer in unseren Hertz brennen. Unsere Hoffnung wird für Generation weiterleben, durch unser Blut. Könnten die Blut heute vergießen, Feuer werden, um unsere Feinde niederzubrennen. (Inhabitants of Hoffnung. Today may be the darkest day of our history. But we cannot allow our Hope to disappear. Our Hope will always burn in our hearts. Our Hope will continue to live for generation, through Blood. May the shed blood become fire to burn our enemies to the ground)." Was the short speech of the mayor, a discourse filled with vibrant emotion and passion. There were maybe some reasons why Philosophers used Belkan words sometimes to describe their concept, even in countries were most people didn't know much words in Belkan.

"My, that was a nice speech. I feel like I could go to Oured and drop some FAEB on the bright house right now." Iskanda commented the pretty heated speech. Sure, it was made to foster bravery, but was also filled with hatred to the brim. After all, what was she expecting from Belkans on the verge of annihilation? And did she harbor less hatred for the Oseans? Maybe a tad less, but many things had begun to change for her today, and these changes could only go in exponential ways, for her point of views.

"It is nicht fertig." Donner eight corrected her, as the mayor was finally saying the conclusion.

"In diese dunkelste Tag, in dieser schweren Zeit, guck an der Zukunft wo Hoffnung Hell scheint. (in this darkest day, in these uncertain times, look to the future where hope burn bright)." Were the end of the Mayor's speech. He knew Kupchenko had offered him a lift on a DW-2s when they had evacuated some important officials and engineers, but he refused the offer. He would only leave when his work would be done. He didn't want to sink with his ship like some captains but would not jump right out of it and let the third-class passenger die like some company leaders did.

"Und wir werden die Alliierten zur Hell senden!" Iskanda couldn't prevent herself from adding this line, due to the closeness of the two words, meaning bright for the Belkan word that was written like hell.

 **North of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 11:30, Weather: overcast, medium cloud coverage.**

The radar had been quite quiet on both the Northern and Southern front, but that was about to change very fast, or at least in a very close future. Obviously, they couldn't have heard Iskanda's intent to send all of them in Hell. Yet these allied reinforcements already belonged to hell in some way.

"I have a mixed unit on my radar: Fishbed, Fulcrum, Flankers and Sea Flankers, some Tornadoes." Donner eight described the mixed unit that was coming at them.

"They seemed to be escorting some unit, a bit further away, ETA ten minutes." Donner 3 indicated, having climbed a few kilometers higher than this comrade to increase his radar range.

"Good. I'm counting at least fifteen fighters overall. They don't seem to have any specific camo." Iskanda shared her information too, as the fighters were getting in visual range. To be fair, they had no camo at all, just a plain grey paint job. They only bore the insignia of the Yuktobanian air force, and these had been covered by black hatched lines.

"Great. Here comes the Kulaks." Donner three finally settled on the IDs of these Yukte craft. From his more elevated position, he had a plain field of sight to fire his XMAAs, while the Yukte crafts were beginning to engage his two wingmen with their SAAMs, with the said pilots having no trouble evading the slow semi-active missiles.

"Flankieren Sie" Donner eight ordered to Iskanda, as the first line of Yukte attackers was heavily disturbed by the two XMAA volley, the last of Donner 3. They had made sixth victims on the fifteen that this wave contained. But now all of them had no more XMAAs.

Still, the flank was pretty effective, as the two F-35X flew away from each over, as the Yukte attackers scrambled to evade the explosions of their unfortunate dying comrades. But amongst all of these companions of misfortune, who were the most fortunate ones? Maybe the ones to die in combat, as it was meaning to have a chance to die and end their misery. Iskanda attacked them from the left, after having executed a leftward horizontal loop, flying inverted to fire her QAAMs from her ventral bay easily. Even if she had a pretty bad headache when she inverted after firing three of her QAAMs, two pairs of missiles and a few gun bursts. And as the over members rotated their planes left to counterattack, which she evaded by flying vertically again, they were picked from behind by Donner three who slaughtered three Tornadoes solely with his gun. The three of them had their wings clipped off and either fell toward the Löre in the hope of crash landing or exploded in the fields. The Yukte planes, the few Fishbeds and Tornadoes in the backline of the first wave that they had not initially accounted for were now turning to engage him.

But these four survivors only met their doom when Donner 3 and Schwarze Luchs fell on them like bird of prey, gun blazing and missiles locked. Two of them were killed by vertical gunfire that turned their cockpits into metallic wreckage filled with minced meat and shattered glass, and the two over fell victim to missile that broke their tail, leading to pretty big explosion. But for all these planes, she didn't count any chute. She found that to be expected with the QF-4s and QF-16s, but not for planes with living pilots in it.

"Why aren't they bailing out?" She asked to Donner 3 as he leveled near her, ready to engage the next wave of Yukte attackers, this time made of the Su-27 and -33s, and Fulcrums.

"Kulaks aren't authorized to live outside of their service for their motherland. Just asked to these people they turned into living target practice for Excalibur when they throw them in space above Belka. They are penal units, like they used the Kulaks of the beginning of this century as cannon fodder back then." Donner 3 sadly explained, almost feeling sorry for these soldiers that had almost a gun behind their head at any time. Because these planes were just as ordinary as the usual Yukte plane, but they removed the chute and put some heavy explosive instead. And of course, if the plane crashed, it would blow up. That could explain why these planes had blown up with more power than usually.

"I didn't think that penal units were still a thing. Black ops deserter-killer like Schwarze, I can understand, but that… That his inhuman." Iskanda could do nothing but feel sorry for these Yuktes. She hadn't felt anything but raw hatred for the Hexens, because they were evil people that needed to go down. Of course, they couldn't just simply destroy their AWACS to prevent the Yuktobanian commander of the penal unit to blow them up. They had no choice but to kill them to end their worries for good. And the ones in these fourth-generation jets didn't seemed to be willing to go down as easily as the first ones.

"Donner 4, we are engaged with Osean Penal units too. They are a bit better than the last time." The leading pilot of the other platoon indicated.

"You let too much of them live last time." Donner 3 chastised his colleague, that had let these Osean penal unit live for another day, as they didn't have explosive charge if they run away.

"Only one man is enough to tell the tale." Iskanda commented, recalling her own suggestion she gave to Kupchenko before he attacked the last Osean plane and left only the pilot live. At least here she didn't have to worry that much about such subject.

They would have twelve aircraft against them, with almost four of each type. There was three Su-33s, five Su-27s and four Fulcrums. All of them bearing this anonymizing grey camo, denying their identity as a single soldier, and reducing it to mere pawn without any hopes of getting promotion. It was so simple for Yuktobania to create such units. After all, they engaged plenty of soldiers in the Romneyan Conflict, and not everybody had the bit of luck that Zubov had, to be "given" to Belka.

She rushed head-on toward the Su-27, she knew they were lighter and more agile than the Sea Flankers. All of them try to hit her with their SAAMs, but she made their shot go for trash by flying in a somewhat erratic pattern, sum of hairpin bends. Volleys of standards missiles followed, that once again she evaded successfully, this time by hitting the deck near the power line above that meander of the Löre, which was situated on a perpendicular axis to the Yukte's vector of approach. Their missile either splashed on the river or on the cables. They were slowly pitching down to engage her with their guns. But her next maneuver nullified their chances.

She climbed right in front of them, between the path of the two at the left of the five planes formation. Yet, when they saw her climbing, they noticed that her central bay was wide open. And before they could land a gunshot inside of said bays, they were struck by two QAAMs she had fired at the beginning of her climb. And the three remaining were not aligned correctly to land any hits on her.

As she climbed and did a vertical Himmelman to fall on her enemies, she had a good point of view on Donner 8. He had engaged the four MiG-29s head-on and had inverted his craft as he evaded their SAAMs. Then fired his QAAMs inverted, pulled out an Himmelman without having the need to invert back his aircraft, and finished the two others with a gun burst and a pair of missiles.

Now, she was falling on her preys, gun blazing. One Su-27 had his tail torn off by the gunfire and it somehow triggered his onboard explosives, resulting in quite a big explosion. His wingman had to bank hard to avoid any incoming parts from the explosion, but as he leveled, she leveled her aircraft right on his, and settled his fate with a pair of missiles. The last one had set his aircraft to attack her from the side, but she ruined his attempt by making her F-35X fall on its back, and the fast Flanker overran his target, even if some bullets grazed her fuselage. She was hot on his tail in five seconds, after a very hard turn that would have made the baseline Lightning II stall.

But she was enjoying the fact of using this Belkan model, and the small sharklets that improved its low speed stability. The Su-27 tried to lose her with maneuvers that out her on the verge of stalling. Yet, it was when she chose to stall that she downed him, pitching down to hit the deck and using the gained momentum to catch up with him and perform some Schräge Musik.

Meanwhile, Gustav had not much issues dispatching his Sea Flankers. The two first, he killed them head-on with a pair of QAAMs. But the last was a bit tricky. He tried to lose him by making very sharp turn that reduced greatly their speed. Donner 3 knew in which range of speed they were getting: the one in which Sukhois could perform post-stall maneuvers. So, he let his Yukte opponent do his Cobra, but wasn't passive: he hit the afterburners for a couple of seconds, getting thrown back on his seat by the sudden acceleration, but far outmatching the Su-33's speed.

And before the Su-33s had fully finished to level after his Cobra, he had already done a Herbert Manöver and fired a pair of missiles on his opponent, who was unable to evade due to his loss of speed.

"Cobra is nice for show, but useless if not fully mastered." Gustav pointed out, criticizing disdainfully the downed Kulak, as the two others were joining on his position.

"I thought there was only one thing to master above here, survival." Iskanda went a bit sarcastic, needing to blow off some steams after having to apply death sentence on those Yukte waiting in the death corridors of those modern gulags.

"Well, it's paramount above B7R. But ours' is not here. The transports and the civilians are." Donner eight countered Schwarze Luchs, knowing that sacrifices might be needed to prevent the death toll to go above the thousands.

"Herr Burgermeister expect us to be ready to die to keep Hoffnung safe as long as possible. This battle doesn't come with any certainties." The number three added, not being very positive about the likelihood of victory. Furthermore, how was conceding a city to the enemy a victory? Maybe when all that the enemy would obtain was dust soaked by the blood of their own soldiers.

"Positiveren, bitte." Iskanda asked, trying to cheer up their mood a bit.

However, their mood was frantically cheered down by the Osean reinforcements. This time, they meant business: Iskanda could count nineteen small flying wings incoming on her HUD, which identified them as A-12 Avenger IIs. Even if she doubted heavily that they were here to avenge their drones or the kulaks. And there weren't that many people to avenge on the E-6B she shot down earlier, as there was a great number of chutes when it fell. None of the pilots had survived it, but she hadn't sealed their fate like Pixy did with the Grabacrs either.

For her, it was the first time she saw them. She had already seen the DW-2s, but these were at least fifteen meters wide. While these A-12 Avenger IIs were only as wide as a F-14D with open wings. Maybe they had some carrier-capacities, she guessed. She was wondering why they just show up right now. They could have outnumbered them if the QFs, the Kulaks and this squad attacked all at the same time, they would have succeeded. Hopefully, Oseans weren't the smarter tools on this battlefield, or they would have some issues dealing with their forces. She was about to ask the Donner squad members about the A-12's capacities, when her missile alarm gave her the response, when the A-12s were only at five kilometers.

"They're using XLAAs." She warned her wingmen as she banked hard left to avoid the long-range with poor mobility, who was better suited for downing bombers.

"Then it must mean some of them are in hunter configuration. With their secondary bays with XMAAs and XLAAs." Donner 8 explained one of the configurations of this new fighter the Osean were trying to throw into service. Apparently, they had an entire line of them that they never bothered to finish back then, but due to this these aircraft had been stored outside of their main research centers and had been spared of the EMP disasters. Still, most of their pilots were lacking experience at piloting such aircraft, since the only other flying wings in Osea's arsenal were the B-2s, and B-2 pilots rarely flew fighter jets, which was true in the other way.

"Their other configuration is the striker : XMAAs and heavy SODs. Those must not enter the city, or they would ruin the defenses." Donner 3 added, trying to figure which one had fired XLAAs and which one had not.

"That will be a bit too much of Fox 3s, don't you think? I mean, these F-35X are more mobile than the baseline Lightning II, but not as much as the Su-47 I flew over B7R." Iskanda shared a bit of worries for the first time of this entire mission. Because having more than forty XMAAs incoming would definitively be too much of a heated situation, even for her taste of danger.

"Bienenstock to Donner 3, we have some missile boats heading for your sector, they should be able to provide a bit of support if you force the A-12s to dogfight at low altitude." The central Belkan command of Hoffnung announced them, as a group of four missile boats that were simple hydrofoils with three SAMs launchers was gliding down on the Löre toward their position. But they still needed to attract them to fight at low altitude. And not to attract every one of them or this support wouldn't last long if the A-12s in striker configuration attack the missile boats without these having some aerial cover.

"Can you ask for a Merlin satellite?" Iskanda admitted that this tool of the Pendragon Projekt was a great addition to the battlefield. And it was pretty hard for her to admit that what she wanted to be destroyed a few weeks ago, she was now asking for its help.

"Yeah, we have some links to Tauberg. Wofür (for what)?" The operator that was ready to transmit the area to ionize to the Belkan Wunderwaffe asked for the aim of such use.

"Um diese Vergelter anzugehören. Die Dichte abnimmt mit der Höhe, Recht? (to halt those Avengers. The density decreases with the altitude, right?)" She hoped that the dangerousness of the plasma curtain was somehow following the pressure variation.

"Einigermassen. Merlin auf in zehn Sekunde (More or less, Merlin on in ten seconds)." Another operator answered to her. She had already heard that voice. Very likely during operation Jugement, in which they horribly misjudged the power of said weapon.

"Gut." Iskanda acknowledged and began to set her plane for a steep climb.

"Be ready for anything, Dark Monarch squadron." Their leader announced, as he just heard the term "Merlin" in this Belkan conversation. And it was the only word he understood, because their avionics didn't include an onboard translator. Their squadron had a dark grey camo, with light grey painting of butterfly wings on their lower side.

"One of them is climbing. I'll follow her with the other hunter configured A-12." Dark Monarch 5 observed that the number ten of this Donner squad, the one that had destroyed the E-6B was in a vertical flight, while the two other were circling behind the plasma curtain.

And of course, with the plasma curtain being quite wide and their formation a very close one, they were stop dead in their tracks. Of the A-12 configured in hunter, 9 followed Dark Monarch 5. The other would try to circle around the plasma curtain, but this would be the perfect opportunity for Donner 3 and 8 to ambush them. Besides, the operators on the missile boats were ready too, and with the heavy EMIs the Merlin satellites produced above the operational area, there were pretty high chances that the Oseans hadn't spotted them yet.

As such, as the two remaining A-12 meant for air-to-air tried to trickle around the limit of the plasma curtain, they were warmly received by a pair of standard missiles. They managed to evade those missiles by barrel-rolling to either the right or the left, and retaliate with their standards and XMAAs on the other far away F-35X relative to their position, with Donner 3 being at the north-west of the curtain and the number 8 at the south-west, the curtain following a line between the NW and the SW. Of course, Donner 3 and 8 also managed to avoid this fire coming from both sides, but by hitting the deck, which gave them the momentum advantage in the ensuing dogfight. Indeed, the flying wing pilots were suffering from the fact that these planes had their mass less concentrated on the center of the craft, and as such had greater roll inertia. Thus, they lost more speed as they recovered from their evasive maneuvers.

They tried to regain their speed as they went for the other fighter, crossing each other's path, but as they flew behind the middle of the plasma curtain, they ventured above the missile boats, with their bays still wide open after their first shots. Perfect target that had just chosen to nullify their own stealth. A handful of missiles left their tubes, buzzing from the water level. The few that connected weren't enough to critically damage the planes, those fast missiles having a light warhead. However, they were filled with magnetic particles that acted in the opposite way of deperming systems and would create disturbance in the radar cross section of stealth planes, ensuring their doom. Because the two F-35X didn't lose any time on them, shooting them down with ease.

Meanwhile, Iskanda was still climbing on her side of the plasma wall. Wall that she knew, was thinning with density and altitude, but density wasn't a straight function. She remembered that it was quite a complicated one, one with nonlinearity. But apparently, one Osean had forgotten that fact. He tried to go through at ten kilometers, but the plasma density was still too thick and the static electricity too powerful for his bays, which weren't perfect faraday cages. Thus, he blew up from the inside after losing all radio, his comrades couldn't even hear his afraid voice in his last moments.

Yet, the difference between her survival and their death was quite thin. It could have just settled by the pure specs of their respective planes, but she didn't know anything about the A-12 to be able to gauge that. Furthermore, they had bigger wings than her, so she thought their maximal ceiling would be above hers. And falling in another spin of death was not how she had foreseen to end this fight. She might need the help of the Belkan Wunderwaffe, she admitted this fact. To be honest, it was surely safer to fly with the ones having the Wunderwaffe, and not the other way around. Sure, there was so much glory to gain from destroying the Wunderwaffe, but does all the losses they suffer worth her individual glory? War couldn't be won by a single pilot, after all.

"Schwarze Luchs zu Tauberg. Können sie den Winkel der Sattelite verändern, ein bisschen mehr in Richtung diese alliierten? (SLuchs to Tauberg. Can you change the angle of the satellite, a bit more toward the allies?)" She asked to the Belkan operator, putting her little talks she had with Kellerman in use, as she needed to use a bit of technical Belkan here.

"Es ist möglich. Einigen Grad genug soll." The operator asserted, typing some commands on his monitor.

And at a few dozen thousand kilometers, the longilineal Satellite slowly rotated on its axis. The satellite itself only rotated with a very tiny torque, from some chemical solid propellant meant for orbital maneuvers. But these tiny changes meant that the plasma curtain was not any more vertical, but more of an oblique field. If Iskanda was on the good side of the curtain, the Avengers that were trailing her on the other side were grazed by the electrical currents moving through the air, as their ionic guides were shifting in angle. They all fell, their engines suddenly stopped in their very steep climb. They would have possessed a good lift if they hadn't pitched so much. Right now, most of them were falling without any control on their craft, with the unluckiest ones spinning so much that they were knocked out by the sheer acceleration they were submitted to.

"Es wird gefährlich, diese Feld durchqueren, Recht (it'll be dangerous, to cross this field, won't it) ?" She asserted, ash she was levelling her fighter with her altitude around sixteen kilometers. Her plane was becoming less and less stable at such a high altitude. After all, F-35s had not been intended to be high-altitude flyers, but more of low-altitude multirole strikers.

"Recht. Aber mit nichts in deinem Bays weniger es ist (Well it'll. But without anything in your bays it will be less dangerous)." The operator recognized that with her XMAAs bays empty, she had less risks of taking damage than the A-12s.

"Ich habe nur ein Leben... also, jetzt oder nie (I have only one life... so, it's now or never)." She threw this little line and her worries out of the windows, before crossing the field. Even if she wasn't sure of her survival right now, she had already greater likelihood of survival than against the Hexen of this night.

The F-35X flew through the overloaded air, catching a bit of lightnings. Still, with the air having gotten thinner at this altitude, she suffered less than the one Osean that tried to traverse at ten kilometers. For some instants, she saw some bits of plasma being sucked into her air intakes, and some gauges began to show worrying figures, especially the ones for fuel temperature in her tank. They might blow up if she stayed too long there. So, she didn't lose much time, and once her radar was less filled with EMIs, she hit the deck toward the falling Avengers. She was honestly surprised that her rudders were working. Her gun might be too, she guessed. She didn't wanted to fire missiles because of the amount of EMIs in the area that would make her miss very likely, and not to have some lighting striking inside of her missile bays.

She checked that when she caught up with a A-12 that had managed to regain a bit of stability. However, he hadn't much time to profit of this new stability, as a F-35X was diving on him, and shredded his flying wing with gunfire. She turned one of the first flying wing fighter into a solo wing. Who lose whatever mobility he had as one of his tanks in the snapped wing exploded right at him, like a burst shell of flak.

A few seconds of fall later, she encountered a pair of two still locked into their spins, that must have been quite close when they fell, and that were far too close for their own safety. She fired a gun burst to the one at the left, which by reflex rolled toward the right. And impacted his own wingman. The three next were a bit more widespread, as they had fully lost control other their craft, that had rolled on their pitched axis way too much time, and the negative Gs they had been submitted might have been deadly for two of them, because she was only seeing one trying to recover. The dead ones were no worth wasting her time nor her bullets

For this one, she guessed she was not far away enough from the Merlin satellite's area of effect to use her missiles. She thought she would need two of them to down those flying wings that had a stronger wing structure than the wings of more usual fighters like her own. She fired two missiles on his left wing, and the damage were more severe than she had anticipated. Maybe it was because her own kinetic energy had added itself to the energy of missile, and thus the blow was more powerful. Whatever the reason, in the end the fate of the Osean was the same : his death, as his fighter burned like a torch.

While she was catching the last four of the falling A-12, she could see the progress made by the two Donner team members. Three others tried to trickle in again, thinking they could overpower the only two aircraft. They had made the mistake of underestimating these pilots that had nothing to lose today and were fully convinced to be acting for the good of their people. And even if she liked doing the wrong things sometimes, she had to agree than having the feeling of being the "good" guys could be a good foster. Two of the three Avengers were destroyed by missiles fired head-on from the F-35Xs. Maybe it was their QAAMs, to have such accuracy, since the flying wings weren't able to avoid them even if they banked as hard as they could.

The third had no better fate: he managed to evade a QAAM by making the flying wings go flat on its back, performing some kind of false Cobra, but this deprived him greatly of his mobility. He stalled a bit, almost entered into a spin that brought him closer to the river

"Damn, that was close." The Osean pilot admitted, as he was slowly getting his flying wing stable again.

But before he could target anything, three missiles were heading toward him and blew him up.

"Well, case closed." Donner 8 commented the unfair death of the Osean. They really needed to improve their piloting of such planes if they wanted to be a real threat. Not too much, but enough so they wouldn't end up in laughable situation like this one.

"Nice shot for a missile boat." Iskanda congratulated what many pilots judged to be an insignificant threat compared to Aegis vessels. Sure, these were almost glass canons, but they could fire so quickly that there were great risks of hurting oneself with the shards of glass of said glass canon.

"Well, Dankeschön." The operator thanked back. He knew he was onboard of a glass canon. He actually envied the operator of RTLS on Excalibur, that hadn't a single chance of being killed in the actual state of things.

She only had the four last to take down by now. She took care of the two further away first. One with a missile on his cockpit, which reduced the pilot to minced meat. She aimed a bit more cautiously for the other and fired right into his air intake. His engines blew up instantly, and due to the violent shock, the plane was shattered in half, with the two parts falling in opposite direction. Then, yawing toward the last two, she set her plan in motion to kill them, but had to change it a bit as they opened fire. They had almost managed to regain enough stability to fire at her with enough accuracy. Which they did, forcing Iskanda to accelerate her fall, making them overshoot, with their volley of XMAAs crossing behind her falling craft -above it might be a better designation-.

They knew they had little hope to survive this fall, as most of the systems onboard theirs craft where still inactive from the effect of the Merlin satellite. However, they thought they could have at least the compensation of having taken down this "Schwarze Luchs" South Belkan ace. Or at least that's what their commander told them. Truth was their commander didn't know much than this about this new foe -or new allies for the CSB, from another point of view-. Almost, she was almost falling to her death, they exulted. They honestly thought they had hit her with their twin-mounted guns

But like she had made some Belkan misunderstood her fall above the Futuro canal, when she stopped her fall mere meter above the sea level, she fooled those Oseans. She performed a vertical Himmelman, which was quite hard to bear given the amount of speed her aircraft had gained during this long fall. It was a good thing these aircraft were intended to be carrier compatible, as such they had a bit more of resistance to mechanical stress. Still, it wasn't enough to prevent a high-pitch alarm to ring inside her cockpit, repeating "Achtung, strukturelle Fehlerrisikos." (warning, risk of structural failure). Which she did suffer in the end, when the canards they had added on those F-35X were torn off, as well as half of her elevators.

Yet, even with all of those pieces having being shattered by the high-Gs, she managed to keep her aircraft in control, and to do her vertical downward Himmelman. And, using her X-shaped empennage, she guided herself back to the falling A-12s, that were startled to hear the sound of their missile locked alarm. Like that UCAV operator she had encountered in her first official mission for Ustio, they underestimated her capacity to undergo pain and overly dangerous situation.

"How did she pull…" Was one of these pilots last questions, that he could never finish, as a strong gun burst struck his engine from behind. The A-12 shattered in a thousand pieces as the structure failed to keep the plane intact after having suffer so much punishment from this fall.

The other one tried to roll on the pitch axis to get his sight on her, but he pitched down too much, and fell again to his death, which came earlier than he anticipated, as a missile went straight to his cockpit, way before he impacted the ground.

Then Iskanda leveled her craft with chill-spinning ease, and pitched down a bit, attacking the two last A-12 that showed quite a great amount of reluctance to move. They had all the reason to act in such ways. However, one of these reasons disappeared suddenly: the EMI of the plasma shutter were losing in intensity, and by the time Iskanda had gotten in range, the A-12 were able to release a volley of their heavy SODs. The cloud of deadly shrapnels that covered the river the next second didn't let any chance to survive for the missile boat's crew.

"Donner 3 zu Tauberg, was passiert? Antwort! (What's happened? Respond!" Gustav asked quickly, having to barrel-roll to evade some XMAA from one of the A-12s.

"The North Belkan… They're using their anti-satellite missiles. The Merlin satellite is still active, but in defensive mode." The operator was angry and sorry to admit that the Rald Partei had now chosen to fight their own men, and thus to endanger their own citizen. Maybe this was the reason why most of the population of Hoffnung had chosen to join the CSB. Some had chosen to go to a closer location, Sudentor. But only a very short margin had chosen to retreat North with the units of the army that preferred to run rather than to stand up and fight.

"Bevolksverrätern. Stolzohne. (Traitor to the people. Prideless)." Donner 8 swore, and these few words were followed by a nice streak of the Belkan equivalent of many f-words.

"Sie benutzen ihre TempestAngreiffSchiffe. Sie werden nur uns überlasten, nicht zerstören. (they're using their Belkan Aegis class. They will only saturate us, not destroy us)" The operator tried to put all of this under this perspective that the repurposed BAWS they were using as ASAT missiles had poor capacity in this field. Still, they had obtained one thing: to force the defenders of Hoffnung to step back. And the same thing was happening at the south, and there too they would have to step back.

"Aber ich kann diese zerstören." Iskanda intervened, as she was getting on range for her standard missiles on the last two Avengers, who had been focused a bit too much on the two Donner squad members, that had succeeded in evading their attacks, and even in retaliating, thus further driving their attention away from their sixes. One took a pair right in the middle of the structure, behind the cockpit. A more formal jet would have just blown up from having his engines blew up. But since the engines were a bit more spread out, he only suffered from a terrible speed loss as the extended damages nullified the stability of the plane.

The other managed to evade a first missile from Iskanda's F-35X by doing a quarter of a barrel-roll, with the missile missing him by less than a meter. But as he was about to level in order to maintain his speed and the distance between him and this modified Lightning II, he realized he just did the mistake that caused his last alive wingman's life, but in reverse this time. As he was slowly countering the greater inertia of his flying wing, the F-35Xs of Donner eight and three opened fire from both sides, having successfully flanked him. The impact was terrible, ripping most of his wings. Due to the momentum of such heavy blow, his aircraft -or what was remaining of it to be more precise-. entered a deadly spin, that ended up with him crashing not that far away from the still fuming remains of the missile boats. The killer had joined his victims.

"Nice teamwork, pals." She commented their dual flank, with a fully honest mindset. These Belkans were showing quite a lot of determination. As much as did the Ustian when fighting for Directus, maybe.

"Kein Zeit für Komplimente (No time for praise)." Donner 3 said, as he was turning toward the northern limits of the airspace of the city, under protection from the BAWS. And according to his radar, not only the BAWS. They had maybe a chance to resist to the less numerous waves of eleven A-12s and a few B-2s there.

"Es stimmt. Rückschritten müssen wir (it's right. we have to retreat)." Donner 8 nodded, fully knowing that their capacity to evade such a swarm of enemy were limited. They had succeeded against greater odds just a few minutes ago, but they had the power of the Sword of Kings with them. And now, with its power challenged by North Belka, the three of them had to retreat. The closest A-12s were already in range, which caused their lock-on alarm to blare with a high-pitch tone. And since they were still pretty far, there was a pretty high likelihood they were in their hunter configuration.

If they made to the city, they would have a chance to survive this. The SAM sites she had seen near those fuel tanks weren't the only defenses nearby. They had talked enough times about BAWS for her to know that this city had quite a number of them. And if the A-12s might be agile enough to evade them, the B-2s weren't. Furthermore, one of the two bridge that were linking two industrial sites did seem to be a railway bridge. Railways that remind her of one thing that had once almost jeopardized the situation.

 **Northern Sector of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 11:45, Weather: overcast, medium cloud coverage.**

Despite the few volleys of XLAAs hot on their tails, they had managed to enter back into Hoffnung's airspace. They had flown other the building of the suburbs of the highly widespread industrial city. Now she was understanding why the fly-by onboard her ULM seemed to be so long, with the city covering the entire valley that had a croissant-like shape. The Bienenstock base was a bit more to the North-West, were a smaller valley was open by an affluent of the Löre. Flanked between these arrays of mountains were still laying the dozens of factories that had somehow allowed Belka to keep the pace with the allied forces.

Then they flew other the little SAM site she had seen a bit sooner, who were either on top of some fuel tanks or hidden between them. However, she had not that much time to enjoy the landscape right now: like the two other F-35Xs, she had an impressive quantity of missile heading for her.

Usually, it was her who would come with crazy plans and the others would be afraid to follow her schemes. Now it was the opposite, when she saw what was on the railway bridge and heard what Donner 3 suggested:

"They have set a RTLS on the second bridge. If we fly just above the first, then dived below the second, we should be able to sleep between the fingers of those Fox 3s spammers!" He described his plan, as the SPKs set on the first bridge were beginning to fire. Iskanda recognized very well the shape of the RTLS, this heavily armored railcar with its telescope-like laser turrets. This one had the four small dual turrets. At least if they were hit by a stray shot, their crafts wouldn't be vaporized instantaneously.

"Gut. Ich werde dir verfolgen." Donner eight agreed, as he doubted that any conventional counter-measures would have any efficiency against such number of missile trailing them

"Ver" Iskanda simply said, a bit startled that once again, she would be saved by the accomplishment of what she once swore to destroy.

Their three aircraft flew very close to the bridge. Luckily, these were old arc bridges, so they had no network of cable to go through. Furthermore, the SPKs were on the sides and not on the middle. Otherwise their jet wash could have pushed one off the bridge, since they were very low. If they had their gear down, they could have taxied on the bridge for sure.

Behind them, they could already hear quite a lot of small explosion, half-covered by the deafened sound of the SPKs firing indiscriminately. Then, they flew even lower, skimming above the water lever like LASMs would, while the sky was covered by even more small explosions of the missiles trailing them, and their radar was getting covered by the EMIs caused by the shots of the RTLS. The fire was so intense than small sparks began to appear in mid-air.

Donner three and eight saw a bunch of A-12s that were heading toward the eastern side of Hoffnung, where there were arrays of small buildings. They weren't by any means skyscrapers, but their height was enough for the Osean to use them as some kind of cover to circumvent the bridge's defenses and thus get free reign for the small squad of B-2s following them. Thus, they banked right, and glided toward those buildings, unseen to the Oseans that had some other building in their field of sight.

Iskanda, on the opposite, saw that some of the A-12 that must be in striker configuration were firing with all of their strength at the RTLS. Already one SPK was down. Yet, she had seen some unorthodox method of approach, and it was on the western side of the river. So, they parted ways, without one noticing the others, as the EMIs of the RTLS were ruining their comms to such a level that they couldn't understand each other.

"If we can go through this little array of buildings, we shall be fine." One Osean pilot said, as he and five other A-12 in hunter configuration were flanking the RTLS, or at least trying to. Besides, flying low made them harder to track by the radar guiding the BAWS falling warheads. They were happy to get this cover, because the first salvo of the BAWS almost killed two of their squadmates that were flying a bit too close, as they had to pull last second evasives.

"Yes, and then their foolish Hope to keep their city will burn." Another bid, as they had easily destroyed the first few SAMs that were between these building, having one striker with them that overpowered their defenses with two heavy SODs, while their shot ended up trashed on some nearby building. Yet, this had forced them to fly close to one another again. And that caused their doom a few seconds later.

Donner three and eight had the chance to know Hoffnung better than these Oseans. Thus, they know where the few light defenses were situated, and how much time it would take to those Oseans to destroy them. Thus, they knew were they would arrive, given the speed of these A-12s.

"It's you who'll burn today." Donner 3 shouted, as he just flanked the Oseans, coming at their three hours, while the number eight had gone through a more oblique street, and was coming on their eight hours.

Pairs of missiles were quickly fired by both Belkan planes, taking the Osean by surprise. Yet, only one of them was shot down by the direct fire. However, one crashed his flying wing as another tried to lose a missile by flying near a building. The missile did crash, but the impact caused a great cloud of shattered glass to appear right behind him, and right behind him was also their striker. Whose air intakes sucked a bit of these tiny sharp things. His engine was dead in a few seconds, and as he was turning hard to evade the gun from Donner eight.

Furthermore, the one that flew near the building to lose the missile didn't had a better fate : as he kept climbing close to the building, he flew above it. He hadn't seen the AA guns on its top, flying at the bottom of the street on their way to this ambush they hadn't seen coming either. Numerous rounds pierced his wings, and the right fuel tank began to burn. A few seconds later, as he tried to fly away from the short range Belkan anti-air defense, one warhead of the BAWS went right for him. When they had enough mobility, they could evade it, but not after losing one engine and with a fuel tank burning.

"Three against two. We should have the advantage!" One Osean claimed, but he was only lying to himself to cope with their losses.

"Es ist nicht genug." Donner three retorted, pursuing one Osean between some building under construction. And as the Osean had to pitched down in order to evade some crane, he fired a pair of missiles on the said crane. The debris had a pretty high chance of hitting the Osean flying wing. He chose to fly vertical to evade a certain death, but the chase had made him bleed his speed. Thus, he stalled, and a gun burst of the F-35X that just had to pitch up a bit finished him.

"Let's try to run while they are busy." The very Osean who had claimed to have some false numeric superiority had turned toward the RTLS. He was followed by the last survivor. Still, the said last survivor wouldn't survive much longer. Donner eight attacked him from below, forcing him to climb.

And as he climbed and turned on his afterburners to outrun the F-35X, he got himself in the area of fire of the RTLS. Which his radar covered by EMIs should have taught him. But now, he kept climbing, even after Donner eight had abandoned the chase, seeing nothing on his radar but grey due to the radar anomalies caused by energy-based weaponry. He didn't see the small turrets of the RTLS targeting him, from one or two kilometers away. He only realized that he was targeted when the structural integrity alarm blared, as the fire from the RTLS had ruined his wing surface, which was quite thin near their bays. He exploded in mid-air after having half of his hull torn off by the Femtolasers.

The last one was shot down by the RTLS itself, at close range. SPK rounds damaged his intakes, and as he tried to ram his aircraft into the armored railcar, the weapon housed in his bays exploded due to the heat caused by their plating being sublimated.

"Wo ist Schwarze Luchs?" Donner 3 wondered, as he had now come to realize that she hadn't follow them. She hadn't crash either, or someone would've noticed it on the ground. The question, was indeed, where was she? Even her new Belkan IFF wasn't shown by his radar anymore. There wasn't a lot of places that could hide a plane from its own transponders.

"Ich sehe sie nicht." Donner eight acknowledged. And it was a bad time to be outnumbered, as the B-2s had come a bit closer to the city. Maybe close enough to use their cruise missiles on the RTLS. Which could deal with five A-12 in striker configuration, but not five A-12s and five B-2s.

"The Merlin's trackers had lost her too." One Tauberg operator who was transmitting the stealth position to the Belkan in Hoffnung added, having lost her just as she turned left after that bridge, when the two others turned right.

"Ich hatte ein neue Flugvektoren gefunden." She surprised all of her new allies and enemies, as she just came out from below a very long metallic container-conveyer, that linked all factories and was used to reduce the delays for the moving of parts between factories, situated on the western side of the industrial complex, and was making her arrive on the three hours of the swarm of A-12s that kept releasing their heavy SODs on the RTLS to saturate its Femtolasers.

"Were is she?" An Osean asked, having not seen where she was coming from nor to where she was going either.

"In your sixes, Dummkopf." She bluntly replied, as she had flown low after leaving that tunnel, unseen from the Oseans. She had picked this one as he was coming back from a short gun run on a SPK. Gun run that had caused him to lose half of his control surfaces, but the SPK was destroyed. Still, without these, he had a hard time evading her. To be fair, he had no time to evade her, since she pitched up on her approach, only to fire at his canopy a few seconds later.

Two others tried to attack her, but she had still the advantage of mobility on those poorly trained A-12s pilots. Even in spite of her destroyed canards. They fired a volley of XMAAs at her, which she evaded by tilting her aircraft at a ninety degree with the horizon, and then dived below their firing arcs. That they could expect. But they didn't expect her to pull what seemed to be to them a fast U-turn, but was her little head-to-tail maneuver, which caused her to see in black due to the sheer acceleration she had to bear.

Still, seeing things in black and white for a few seconds didn't prevent her to perform Schräge Musik on these two A-12s she just outturn. Both exploded as she filled them with Belkan lead.

The two last, who were about to release another volley of SODs, felt the full retaliatory power of the RTLS. The CSB and its allied city of Hoffnung didn't need to use Vergeltungswaffe to retaliate. Femtolaser were efficient enough, who pierced their wings as they vaporize the metal they were made off. Before this "Schwarze Luchs" attacked them through this unorthodox manner, they would have enough SODs in the air to keep the RTLS operators busy. Not anymore. Now they had lost. This battle and their life, which ended quite violently in two balls of fire that explode on impact with the Löre, as they tried to steer their burning aircraft toward the last Belkan defenses, but a few shots of the Femtolaser made them fell a bit quicker.

"Blue Shadow, retreat." An Osean commander ordered from over the waves at the B-2s that had advanced with too much confidence in the ability of their forces to deal with a RTLS. After all, they had heard that one pilot managed to destroy three of them at Directus single-handedly. Yet, what they didn't know of course was that the same pilot was now chasing them.

"Roger sir, but I'm afraid we won't go this far." One of the B-2 copilot indicated, as he was seeing the three F-35X closing on their five aircraft formation. Two had already run a bit further.

"You're right to be afraid indeed. Afraid of death who's coming to get you." Iskanda taunted them, as she was catching up with one of them. Sure, they could activate their ECM pods and launch their flares. That won them a bit of time. But no jamming could negate guns. Her gunfire set one of their engines on fire, and it was enough to blow it sky-high. Maybe their payload was of incendiary bombs.

Two other Spirits with their grey-blue metallic camo fell to the guns of the defenders of Hoffnung. But as they caught up with the two last, a small issue began to emerge: fuel. They had all three made massive use of their afterburners this morning, especially Iskanda during her climb. They could only pepper the two last with gunfire, enough to hinder their mobility, when they realized they were bingo fuel. They hadn't much ammo left to be honest. Around a dozen missiles and hundred rounds.

"We have to head back to the Bienenstock." Donner three conceded, letting these two B-2As escape their fate for a while, as he turned toward the airbase.

"Damn, I hate to let my preys get away!" Iskanda was forced to follow him, as her gauge was now quite low. It was so low that she might even need to land her aircraft like a glider.

"Sie werden nicht uns entkommen können. (they won't be able to escape us)" A BAWS operator spoke. For once, she could see the full flight of one of these short-range ballistic missiles. The big rocket flew vertically, before curving her path. Then the nose cone was blown away by small explosives, and from the hole a full volley of these small MIRVs (Multi target re-entry vehicles) fell at supersonic speed on the B-2s.

"Fly faster!" The copilot shouted to the pilot of one of the two last two Spirits.

But this was for nothing. They had no way to evade these warheads. They had sacrificed their stealth to avoid getting picked up by the Merlin satellites. Little did they know, the satellites were as good at tracking low-flying planes that high-flying ones, using low frequency infrared cams, a technology once used by Oseans on their U-2 spy planes. How ironic that their own achievements had made Belka more powerful.

"These Belkans… may no one spare you." A pilot of the B-2 threatened them, before having his craft obliterated the next second. Little did they know, these Belkans didn't have a single chance to know to who he was referring in his last sentence.

"I wouldn't either." Donner 3 responded, now being quite close to the airport.

Landing was a bit cautious for all them, as they were already pretty tired from this battle. It was even more for Iskanda, as she had to land as a glider, like she had foreseen, and having lost her canards only deprived her even more of the weak low-altitude stability of the F-35.

 **Bienenstock, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:00, Weather: overcast, medium cloud coverage.**

The tough landing, actually reminded Iskanda her final stunt of the morning, since it had been as tough as to land with a damaged fighter. Which she would have no time to get repairs, sadly.

She had seen very well the two Belkan pilots steering eastward to go hunt those A-12 that were trying to go below the field of fire of the BAWS and RTLS. But almost as much Avengers were going for the RTLS head-on and were still mobile enough to avoid the supersonic MIRVs of the BAWS. Attacking them head-on wasn't a good solution, because she would risk stray shots from the RTLS, and XMAAs from the A-12s.

However, on the western banks of the Löre, she had seen some metallic structure that was going from some little harbor, were crane could move giant containers, to the factories near the two bridge up North. She thought she would have a nice time flying below that metallic conveyer, but she was dearly mistaken.

Apparently, the conveyer had been stopped, but they had not removed the last container that were being brought to the factories, forcing her to do quick and sharp turns to stay below the metallic structure, and thus hidden from the A-12's sight. At some point, she had to fly below the container, in a tight space, with less than five meters between her and the ground.

Then, she had a small fear at one point: something it the conveyer a few hundred meters in front of her and cause a container to hang partially from its attachment, blocking her path. For a moment, she thought someone had deliberately fired at her, but no second shot came. She attributed that to a stray shot, or some SOD having lost its track due to the EMIs of the RTLS. She had no choice but to blow the container with her missiles. Luckily for her, it was not full of explosive shells or anything, but metallic pieces that flew everywhere when it exploded and fell to the ground below.

A few other times, this happened. She had to destroy them without too much noise, or she would blow her silent approach. It wasn't as risky as flying in a tunnel since there was no walls on the side, but for this reason, she had to fly with even more care, so she wouldn't fly out of the conveyer hiding her.

The final line was pretty complicated. There was first, a sharp turn, that was quite hard to go through since she almost grazed a hanged container. But that was easy, compared to the last few hundred meters : there was containers that had been laid on the ground, where they were supposed to be picked by some trains, and some still hanged on the conveyer, creating some kind of metallic maze she had to fly through. And of course, she was far too close from the enemy craft to blow everything in her path. So, she had to slow her craft even more, grazing the metallic boxes from even closer, having to dive below some, that seemed to be hanging barely, and that the thrust of her fighter made move a bit. She was afraid she would move one and caught a chain reaction that would ruin her try at being stealthy.

However, the last four ones, that were a series of two hanged and two set on that railway, she couldn't do nothing to avoid them. Besides, she couldn't fly around, due to some of the pillars of the conveyer near that area. So, this time, she had to destroy a bit more of those containers. She hoped they wouldn't hear the explosions, but since she could hear the pretty loud explosions of SOD being intercepted nearby, she might be covered by that. And all her care she enacted on not to destroy the other containers might have been unnecessary, she realized.

So, she fired two missiles, and slow her fighter even more, at the limit of stalling, to ensure her she would be able to fire two other missiles on the containers. In the end, there was only a tiny space to fly through, above the two containers that had just been violently separated from their attachments and had fallen on the ones below them. But her X-shaped empennage that was smaller in height than conformal rudders such as an Eagle's or a Flanker's allow her to fly through this last part of this metallic maze

She was pretty exalted when she stormed through the torn off metallic container. She quickly climbed to a more safer altitude, and as she was hearing notices of her new wingmen worrying about her, she replied with a chilled voice, as she had needed to be at her chilliest point while flying in there ;

"Ich hatte eine neue Flugvektoren gefunden. (I have found a new vector of approach)"

Which was what she had told to Pixy when she flew through the flying arcs of the cathedral, or through the fortress at Glatisant. He would have understood if he was here. At this thought, she wondered what he would do at this place? He might choose Patria other money too.

"What did you do with your canards during this flight?" An operator asked her, bringing back from these souvenirs of this very recent past.

"I admit I took a bit too much Gs when falling from 18 kms." She replied, almost forgetting her long fall after this very close-quarter fly.

"Yeah, what did you do when you went off radar? I mean, you manage to fool even the Merlin Satellite." Donner 3 had some issues processing what had happened here. Anyone knowing Galm 1 would have understood for sure. But they didn't know that she was and intended to keep it that way until she deemed useful to reveal her identity to those Belkans.

She might have earned their respect this morning, but not their trust yet. Besides, who had said that the fights were over? They had won at the North, but the south had great trouble, from what the control tower was announcing them.

As such, they were grounded only the time to reload and refuel, and obviously with no time to repair her damaged canards or her slightly damaged gear. It was the same with Donner 3 and 8, they would have to do with their injuries of this morning's flight.

"So, you just below the industrial conveyer?" Donner 3 showed total astonishment when she recalled her little underground fly-by.

"But it's stopped since the beginning of the evacuation." Donner eight intervened, a bit doubtful that their newly recruited "Schwarze Luchs" pulled such a stunt. She hoped he didn't draw any parallel with her and a now lost allied female pilot that happened to pull such stunt.

"Well, there was some containers in my way I had to blow, I admit. But will still have some Osean left to murder." She replied quickly, this little almost underground flight being not her best one.

"Es stimmt. Na komm, Schwarze Luchs, bringen wir diesen Osean um." Donner three acknowledged, and asked her to follow him like this night, even if it was now useless since she had now radio. But she responded, and it was with their aircraft filled again with XMAA and QAAM to the brim that they were cruising to engage those Osean that had unwillingly only signed their death wish.

 **Here, I have decided to cut the chapter in half. For some reasons. First, I might have overexpanded a bit here. Second, I do not think it's good to read such a long one (even if I think there must exist longer chapter than this one was). Third, because it'll gave a bit of suspense and hope in those dark times. And fourth, because I can get a bit lazy, and because it's easier to correct two long chapter than a very long one.**

 **No "Bis nächst mal" (to the next time), aber "Bis nächste Seite" (to the next page)**


	24. Chapter 122: Operation Cannibal 1 part2

**South of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:10, Weather: overcast, medium cloud coverage.**

After their quick refueling, they had streaked right toward the south of Hoffnung, flying above the rows of fuel tanks that flanked the river. At this point of Hoffnung, the Löre was well bent, and it seemed more like a canal than a river, what he was a bit more after and before the most industrialized city of Belka.

When they left the Bienenstock base, they saw that there were still a few transports waiting to leave the city. On their way, they had a look at the civilian airport of Hoffnung, who was flanking the limits of the mountain at the West of Hoffnung. These mountains had often protected Hoffnung from tempest, or invaders on the ground. Now, they couldn't stop the tempest that was slowly settling here, but the SAMs they set on the peaks could surely delay the invaders trying to flank the city, forcing the allied forces to come from its South or its North.

Donner four to seven hadn't had an easy morning, and maybe a harder one that our three musketeers at the North had. First, they were assaulted by a swarm of MQ-9 predators armed with either SAAMs or QAAMs, with the one bearing the first staying behind while the other carrying the latter would try to saturate the four Belkan F-35Xs. But they managed to shrug them off in the end, slowing them down enough to make them become target for the BAWS.

Their second waves were of A-12s. Sixteen of them. They could recognize they had a hard time defeating them, without the support of a Merlin satellite. Thus, half of the BAWS and the three SAMs at the limit of their position were destroyed. Same for the few AA guns south of the first small industrial center, that some foreigners called the "rugby field", as the terrain was dominated by a big flat factory with four chimney protruding of its metallic roof.

And right now, they had trouble with some Osean units which weren't sparing them at all. Because of course, it was the infamous Spare squad of Osea.

"It's harder to fight without the support of the technological achievement of Pendragon. You got the RTLS and one Merlin." Donner 4 had envied the support his brother-in-arm fighting at the North had received. Even if there the fight was also an almost lost one if it wasn't for the stunt that this next pilot had performed. Right now, he was fighting a F-16C while having to dodge the fire of two F-14Ds. At least his vector thrust equipped aircraft could keep up with their swing-wings ones. And they only possessed their XLAAs, who had poor matchup against agile targets.

"We are coming." Donner eight announced, as he was almost getting in range to fire his XMAAs on the fighter of Spare. Unlike the kulaks which hadn't any camo, they would keep their former camo, and as such what they could see in the sky was a patchwork of multi-tone camos and even some with digital camos. But like the Kulaks, they had their emblems shaded, by white lines, one, two or three. According to their intel, it was expressing the gravity of their crimes. Even if the said crime was just to have expressed some pro-peace sentiment after witnessing their comrades getting mercilessly vaporized by Excalibur or to raise their voice against their foolish commander that sacrificed their squadrons for nothing. Few had really committed war crimes. But all of them they were going to.

"They are called the Spare squad? Then I won't spare any of them !"Iskanda cheerfully exclaimed, as she locked onto three F-15Es that had ganged up again a sole F-35X, which was losing speed from having to evade all of their SAAMs he had to evade.

"Dankeschön. Jetzt ist Zeit der Vergeltung. (thanks. Now is time to retaliate)" The targeted F-35X managed to sleep through their locks, pulled a quick Herbert Manöver, and fired a QAAM and a pair of missiles on the two that had evaded the XMAAs of Schwarze Luchs.

"They had received reinforcement." An Osean noticed, but a bit late. The next second, his F/A-18C Hornet was stuck by a QAAM that tore off his tail. He didn't have the time to eject that another missile reduced his craft and himself to a pile of dust spread around by the eddies.

Now, the forces were of seven F-35X against four F-14Ds, five F-15Cs, three F-15Es, a few Fighting Falcons and six F/A-18Cs. No super Hornets nor high-tier airplanes were amongst those condemned. Their commanders wouldn't waste resources on what they considered to be human waste. Still, the Belkan were outnumbered three to one in the current situation. But putting into consideration all they had survived until them, they knew they had the chances to pull that victory off. Even if it would only be a temporary setback for the allied forces, who were supposed to attack en masse this evening according to report from the ears and eyes of the CSB that had infiltrated the allied ranks.

Iskanda went for the F-15Es, knowing that their SFFS would be the most destructive weapon these Spare pilots had in their arsenal. She went low, as they were going for a bomb run on the "rugby field" area. Still, they might have seen her in such close range, as they fired a few SAAMs. Nothing dangerous enough to harm her, but she was a bit disturbed in her approach to say the least. Curving a bit her path, she evaded their gunfire, and fired one QAAM on the one situated at the sides of the three-plane formation, and a gun burst on the one at the center. However, they showed some improvisation for Oseans, which was unexpected.

The one at the center couldn't improvise that much against the gunfire, but the two other fire a pair of SAAMs, which their onboard WSO managed to steer right on the path of the QAAMs.

"Quatsch (sh*)." Iskanda swore, a bit annoyed that some Oseans could display a bit of cunningness for once.

"Keine Sorgen (No worries). We have just to hold a bit more. The last jumbos are leaving the airport right now." Donner 6 indicated, thinking it was a good idea to share the only good news of this fight.

"Eigentlich habe ich keine (indeed I have no worries." Iskanda replied, as she flew below the two F-15Es that had survived her wrath for only a few seconds. Then she performed a half vertical loop, which made her arrive right above the two Strike Eagles. She had gotten fund of the Belkan Schräge Musik, but the Guillotine from that F-15S/MTD Belkan pilot was fun too. And it was what these criminals deserved, after all. She was only quickening the execution. Which wasn't by a very sharp blade, but by two missiles on their respective canopy.

"Wachte mal (Wait a second) … the F-14Ds are skimming above the Löre to the North." She noticed as she leveled, about to engage a pair of F-16Cs that had stayed true to the results of some Osean exercise and were outmaneuvering a F-35. There was only the transport craft they could attack there. She knew these Belkans were ready to fight to the last. While she couldn't let defenseless transport, or worst, civilian craft used to evacuate the citizen of Hoffnung get blown up by these convicts. They were already criminals, but she wouldn't let them add civilian mass slaughter to their list of evil deeds.

"Go, catch them or the five last jumbos will be lost." The pursued F-35X saw her abandoning her intended rescue to go on the hunt, skimming above the Löre. She was so low that she was leaving a trail of fog behind her, with her afterburners at full power.

"These military supplies cannot leave Hoffnung, Spare squadron." The Osean commander enforced his will on his leashed criminals.

"These aren't military craft. But civilian, look at your IFF, dummkopf!" Iskanda was trying for the first time in her life to dissuade someone not to fight.

"Don't listen to Belkan lies." Their commander ordered, but it was not enough to dissuade a hesitant Tomcat pilot. Who begin to do some kind of U-turn, but to be honest she had never the time to observe the change of mind of the pilot or his WSOs.

Because the pilots didn't exist a few seconds later. He had lost a pretty great amount of speed pulling that U-turn, and as such, he wasn't able to evade a pair of XMAAs coming from the F-35X trailing them. Which she had fired while inverting her aircraft, to get sure she had a window of fire from her external bays.

"Spare 12, cover us while we attack these Belkan suppliers." One of the other F-14D pilot ordered with a determined voice. He had ceased to care about what was wrong or right in that war since they throw him into a cell, after he bombed a medical tent in the retaking of Wesson. What would Osea bother with taking Belkan prisoners when this war was aiming to annihilate all of their forces, he thought back then. And it was with the same set of minds that he was climbing to engage them. His WSOs hadn't say nothing back then and stay silent now. After all, he lost half of his family when the fluvial cruise ship they served onboard was destroyed by a bad-aimed anti-ship missile during the first battle of Wesson.

"Roger." The pilot followed the order. At least he wouldn't have any more civilian blood on his hands. He had acted in the destruction of these tents there too, as well as the third still flying F-14D. All of them had good reason to be willing to kill Belkans, but were they really motivated to kill so many civilians without letting them a chance to survive? He wasn't that sure. He tried to motivate himself, as he went head-on against this modified lighting, firing some XLAAs that ended up for trash in the Löre.

"Move or Die. Or just Die, Osean!" She shouted infuriated at the Osean, while evading his missiles with amazing ease. Then she made a hairpin bend to the left, before performing her head-to-tail maneuver. Which took the Osean by surprise.

Still, surprise didn't take his life. A gun burst on his right flank did, and at the very last second, he bailed out, as well as his WSO, the two men were vaporized by the close explosion of a pair of missiles.

"The pursuer is gaining ground." The other Tomcat pilot reported to his leader, who had now arrived in range to use his XLAAs.

Which he lost now time firing on three jumbos, firing two on one and one on the two others. In a few seconds, he thought, all these Belkans would die. They would burn, and then their Hope would. It needed to burn for the allied to achieve victory, he knew it. And he would not be afraid to kill non-combatants here. Yet, he was beginning to be afraid of an earthlier threat than ethical issues.

Thus, the first death that occurred was his wingman's. Iskanda had climbed below him and fired one QAAM and two missiles at its fighter's underside, to make sure he would die. The Tomcat was obliterated in an instant.

Yet, so was the fate of the engines of the two last jumbos he fired upon, while the first as his wings clipped off by the explosive strength that were enough to ruin the hardened structure of a B-52s. These two were falling. They might hope for a crash-land and not kill all of their passengers. But the first that lose his wings was shattered into the shockwave, and the wing-root fillet was torn off as the still functional engines damaged the plane even further.

Then, she saw one of the most horrible way to die, as bodies were sucked into the air. Some were still alive and would be still alive when they would kill themselves from falling from such heights. She had heard of that Yukte nurse that survived a near ten kilometers fall, but she wasn't in perfect health after that, and she fell on snow and not semi-mountainous terrain. What would be left would be only dislocated bodies, with the few still alive screaming in agony for horrible injuries, such as impalement on tree parts.

However, she would made sure that this Osean would not live much longer than his victims and would suffer as much in his death. He tried to engage her head-on, that fool, swearing some insults at her that she dismissed. He could say F-words all he wanted, he was the one that would get screwed here. XLAAs did nothing to her. He did evade her QAAMs, but she was the first to get behind him, as he had closed his wing to outrun her as he went for these transport, and thus hampered his mobility.

A well-aimed gun burst sealed his fate, as the QAAMs had re-acquired their target, and with his engines reduce to burning pieces of metal, he couldn't outrun them. He expected her to fire at their chutes when they bailed out, but her gruesome tactics would differ this time. She had burned these witches tonight, and now he would burn too. Sure, she had no static FAEBs today, but she was good at improvising. She followed their chute, and as she flew nearby, went full afterburner while grazing the pilot's chutes.

The burned fuel set the silk ablaze in a splint second. They tried to separate from their chute and use their secondary ones, but then they discovered that their gear didn't contain secondary chutes. Another thing their commander had not bothered to get, even if it was common practice since the 1960's but that man would try to gain whatever money he could on the safety of his men. Legality wouldn't bother him since their rights had come to an end in that penal unit. Stuck in their harness, the two human torches burned very well.

Maybe some penal units pilots had either seen their becoming, or the tragic fate of what their commander would surely consider to be a misplacing of some zeroes, this error in target designation. Because all of the F-16C decided to fly away. Speaking of mistake of target finder, it was a complete one for the Osean, since at this very moment, the last Belkan military transport was leaving the area. If they hadn't tried so hard on those civilian crafts, they might have succeeded.

The only good news was that the two jumbos with damaged engine managed to crash land, but outside of her field of view, on the other side of the mountains, maybe not that far from Verzweiflungsberg. She wasn't seeing big clouds of smoke, so she could assert they weren't burning. The losses may be minimal today, compared to their predictions without her as a factor.

And it was the only good news, as two Belkan craft had been shot down while she was chasing these Tomcats. The first was Donner 6.

He had fell to three F-16Cs which attacked him head-on, that Schwarze Luchs intended to attack but had to let go as she went on the hunt for these convicted. He thought he would get the upper hand as he managed to kill one with a pair of QAAMs during the first fire exchange, but somehow parts of the burning craft got sucked into his engine. That caused the "engine overload" alarm to blare, telling him that his stand over Hoffnung had come to an end.

"Reaktor überdruck. I have to go." He reported and try to use the last bit of this thrust to get out of the combat area.

But the two F-16Cs weren't going to let him run like that, and also were quick to get in his sixes. He was doomed. But if the sacrifice of his craft would mean survival for the Hoffnungern, he was ready to give in his own.

"Spare 8, Fox 2!" One of the convicted happily announced. But he lost his happiness when the F-35X he was following with Spare 7 went vertical, but didn't climb, thus stopping its motion in mid-air, or almost. And of course, the F-16Cs followed the laws of dynamics and impacted the fighter. Since they were flying very close to one another, both went down.

The Belkan pilot managed to bail out, but none of the Oseans did. Maybe they were too astonished to try anything when they rammed him.

Still, there was another bad news: the loss of the Donner 4. He had successfully downed two F/A-18Cs by firing at them on their side, as they were attacking another F-35X head-on over the "rugby field" area. What he didn't expect was an Osean in F-15C to climb behind one the chimney of the factory and use that as cover to perform a surprise attack. The Belkan pilot then tried to lose the Osean by hitting the deck and going below the structure that was linking the two chimneys, where an aircraft could barely fly, and which foster the "rugby field" feeling of this place. But there, this very aggressive Osean followed him ruthlessly. He was forced to bail out after the F-15C hit him square at his single engine.

"Spare 15, one kill" The Osean said, but without sharing any joy from his actions. Unlike some of the more war-hungry members of this penal units, he didn't feel any accomplishment by doing the dirty tasks for the GHQ.

"That one is very aggressive, for an Osean." Iskanda analyzed, as she was getting back from her somewhat successful pursuit. Sure, she prevented the total destruction of all jumbos, but the death toll would still be over the hundreds.

So, she chose to go to battle with this one. But she would merely toy with him first. And she made be sure to have his attention by shooting down his wingmen with two XMAAs instead of one for each, as they were about to get a lock on Donner 5.

"Spare 15, attacking Schwarze Luchs." He made his will clear, as the Eagle of his squadmates had been obliterated without any chance of survival.

The next move of the Osean was to perform a sharp horizontal loop toward her craft, which she allowed him to do. But she would never allow him to land a single hit on her craft, swinging from side to side whenever he tried to get a lock on her, while laughing on the waves at his foolish attempt to hunt her. And with each tries, she was only infuriating the Osean more as her mad laugh grew louder.

She then saw Donner 5 hunted again, and despite her pursuer firing two QAAMs that she made impact an abandoned warehouse, flying very close to its roof made of glass and metal panels ordered in some curious fashion : they seemed like a wave, but of triangular shape. Still, the time was not to that kind of comparison. She thought she would gain a bit of time by flying close to the ground and between some facilities, but she had to admit that this Osean was persistent. He had learned a bit how to navigate in terrain with heavy encroachment on his path, or maybe he learned from someone, she guessed.

But even with all of his will, he couldn't keep his craft close to her to hinder her counterattack. She was able to catch up with the two other Oseans, that as much trouble as her pursuer to keep up with Donner 5. Definitively, this one was persistent too. And as the Belkan pilot continue her sharp turns and other evasive maneuvers, Iskanda saw an opportunity to strike at the two Osean F/A-18Cs.

Putting the pedal to the medal as they flew straight for once, with the Osean firing their SAAMs on the Belkan F-35X, she burst through their two plane formation, with her sudden presence interfering greatly with those two Oseans. At full speed, she pulled out a quick Himmelman, which maybe gave her a few seconds of redsight, but why would she complain to see her targets in crimson when she was planning to paint the earth with their crimson fluid. They had only the time to pitch up a little to aim their SAAM at her, that she evaded by curving her path, before zooming in quickly, hitting again the high-Gs just after that Himmelman. Donner 5, by now, was long gone, and had shot down a lone Osean F-15E.

But Iskanda hadn't finished with these Hornets : she performed a nearly vertical Herbert Manöver, which made her arrive at full speed at the Oseans, and at the same time the F-15C of that Spare 15 arrived at QAAM range. He tried to fire some, but she was falling so fast that he overshot her. While she didn't miss any of her targets, obliterating them with a volley of XMAAs on their top. Her four missiles didn't let a single chance to these Hornets, and they were worth one life each, since these Hornets had WSO too. Ending as WSO for a penal unit was without any doubt the worst becoming ever.

Furthermore, even when the QAAMs re-acquired her, she fooled them by firing at a fuel tank, and that was enough to trample with their IR sensors. Sure, she caused a bit of damage, but since she couldn't see any smoke pouring out of the building, maybe these factories had already been evacuated, and thus it was less of an issue for her.

Right now, the issue was the last allied message:

"Spare 15, Spare 18 and 2-1 are coming to help you get this one out of the party." Their commander announced this order, and the very soon death for these F-15E pilots. They would surely try to use their SAAMs while the F-15C would hunt her down and make her lose her speed with his QAAMs.

"These are not threatening odds. Only target-rich environment." She retorted, heading straight for the F-15C. He fired a pair of missiles, that she evaded by flying inverted, and pitching up while inverted -so pitching down if she had been in the good way-. His fire pass right above her, and in this position, they were too quick for the missiles to compensate for her change of trajectory. He tried to follow up with his guns, but then she decided to kick the afterburners, and fly straight on him.

He was reluctant to move for a few seconds, and this was a glaring mistake. Not to him, but for the two F-15Es. After all, they couldn't fire with him and that Belkan pilot on the same axis without risking hitting him. And as their joust was not going as fast as they anticipated, they had come closer than the SAAM required. What she did by taking advantage of his current idle position was to fly inverted over him, at very close distance, with her X-shaped empennage almost grazing his rudders. Something that she had already done while fighting for the allied forces, and not yet on this side.

Which side was she even, she asked herself? Her own was the blunt answer, but this operator of Tauberg had allowed her to transmit some orders to the thing she once swore to destroy. Who was she fighting for, she could say for the fleeing habitant of Hoffnung. In that regards, her fight was almost chivalrous. But her way to get her victory was all but chivalrous of course. Using their wingman to prevent them from firing was unorthodox to say the least. Of course, if these F-15Es pilots had the same mindset than the one of the F-14Ds that opened fire on some jumbos, they would have sacrificed their squadmates to get to her. But they didn't, and thus they fell to her last volley of XMAAs.

During this whole chase, and the downing of these Hornets and Strike Eagles, Donner 3, 5, 7 and eight chased most of the other members. There were only a few retreating aircraft by now, and even fewer that tried to stand and fight. You couldn't expect bravery from criminals.

And her, still pursued by this F-15C that she had got a good read on while crossing his path from close, was arriving on this battlefield. She distinguished between his two white lines the almost erased symbol of mage squadron. She knew only one mage squadron, and this squadron had only one member still alive after the battle over Mt Ivrea, where she showed him a bit of her aggressivity. He had learned but would never master it. It took more than to look for an idea to understand it. It required to make it your own, not simply copy it.

But she didn't want to shoot him down, now that she had understood who he was. Now, she wanted to show him pain. She guessed that shooting down his comrades with him unable to retaliate and watching that with utter powerlessness as he was barely keeping up in his sight was already a good step. She was only repeating what Kupchenko taught her during operation Dynamo and the subsequent attack on the Wunderwaffe, when he reduced her brother-in-arms in cinder, without harming her that much. Bearing your own pain was doable. Yet seeing the other dying all around you and bearing the weight of survivor was much harder. She was a living proof of that.

She said that these convicts had no bravery, and that was certainly true. However, some might have mistaken dauntlessness and lack of fear for bravery. In some case, these qualities could lead to man outperforming above their standards, but here it would only lead to their death.

"Spare 3 and 4, engaging the Schwarze Luchs." A F-16C pilot tried to threaten her as he engaged her head-on. His poorly aimed machine guns grazed her, while two of her missiles that she fired at the limit of her firing arcs destroyed his wingman. Again, she was taken by euphory as she watched them die without any fighting will. And the F-16Cs wasn't untouched, with her gun opening fire after she pitched up a bit to fire with a bit of high ground.

"Damn, I lost my front radar." The Osean complained, as bullets from the F-35X pierced his frontal fuselage.

"Then move away, you cannot help anymore." Spare 15 -or to use his real name that Iskanda had by now figured and remembered, the Second Lieutenant Kizuko Takako aka Mage 2-.

But despite the help Spare 15 tried to give him by firing a pair of XMAAs, he died. To be honest, it was the help he gave him that killed her, as Iskanda put the pedal to the medal as she saw the two XMAAs incoming. Even if she had made a gun score, they hadn't crossed yet. And when she crossed his path lightning-fast and inverted, she had two XMAAs trailing her very close. As she flew extremely close to the damaged F-16C, and as the missile were dumb "fire-and-forget" munition, they kept their forward motion, lined up on her craft. But their proximity sensors make them blow up as they follow her right below the F-16C. Which could be considered to fall victim of a blue-on-blue. And the irony of the situation only caused a bit more laugh from this Schwarze Luchs. By now, he had gotten a read on her. He would have recognized that mad laugh anywhere.

"I'll kill you, Schwarze Luchs!" The angered Osean pilot shouted at her, while growling from both frustration and desperation. But anger got over his concentration, and he wasn't as good, and couldn't keep up after this horrible mistake.

Thus, she managed to outmaneuver him after a streak of sharp turns. He was activating his afterburners to compensate for the loss of speed. She knew that in a straight line, the acceleration of the F-15 was unmatched by most fighters that she could get her hands on, with the exception of the Nord 1500 Griffon. But that aircraft was not available right now, of course. She preferred cunningness over brute force, and her enacted plan was relying on him overrunning her with a close timing.

She flew a bit lower than him, as he was catching up and was in gun range, as a way to begin her last stunt, and primarily to evade his gunfire. She had no doubt that his gun would wreck her single engine. She had seen Pixy down enough single-engine fighter to have a good mind on the subject. Then, she pitched high, but without keeping her thrust high. She wasn't trying to pull a Cobra, that wouldn't help, just getting below him at a precise angle.

Two gun burst stroke the Osean that just overrun her as she pitched her fighter. The first stroke the nose, knocking down his radar. The second went through the center of the fighter and damaged the right engine critically. The Osean had to shut it down, and loss in roll stability due to this. He would have a hard time landing. She would let him go. There was no glory in killing him, like Kupchenko had surely seen no glory in killing her after the first slaughter of the Wunderwaffe -even if to be honest, its very first was when their space drones were suddenly destroyed during Operation Hell Bound-.

"Bienenstock to Donner, the last penal units members are running away. There's no point in pursuing them too far, it would only deplete our forces." The Airbase was calling them back. Even if Iskanda wasn't already bingo fuel, she knew that there was a pretty high likelihood that the Southern defenders of Hoffnung were.

"Ver. RZB" Iskanda replied, letting Mage 2 live with the weight of the survivor, and worse, the weight of guilt that would chew away at his heart for all of his life. It was almost what she felt after her defeats at the hand of Kupchenko, but these new victories had swept away those dark feelings.

As Donner 3 and 8 joined up with her, they were a bit startled that she had let that Osean run away. They saw her causing the death of a neutralized fighter, and before, having no trouble in burning the chutes of these killers flying F-14Ds. Which caused Donner 8 to ask, when he was almost getting to understand her, and was resetting pretty much his understanding :

"Why did you let him run away?"

"Nur eine Zeuge, um die Geschichte zu erzählen. Es gibt keine Herrlichkeit ohne Zeugnisse (just a witness to tell the tale. There's no glory without any witness)" She defended her almost selfless act. Sure, there was enough Belkan to tell the tale, but she wanted the Oseans to not only know her, but to fear her. After all, it was out of fear that they respected her when she was their allies, and she wasn't going to change that right now, when she was at the exact opposite of an allied to Osea.

They would be afraid of her, she swore. Until her enemy would crawl away in fear and acknowledged her superiority, she would made them fear her. She might not need to perform the same kind of horror she had to perpetrate against the Hexens, but she would always be ready to.

"Es stimmt." Donner 3 seemed to agree. It was a bit surprising to her that now and with her having proven her loyalty by her acts in the air, Donner 3 was almost trusting her more than Donner eight, when they were at the inverted situation on the ground an hour prior to this moment.

The five F-35X flew toward the airport. On their way, they announced her that some ground troops had located the two other Donner team that survived getting shot down. For this day the pilot had no casualties. And the civilian casualties were pretty low, in comparison of the entire population of Hoffnung, several hundred thousand.

They had made half the way to the airbase, when something happened, that was going to raise the number of casualties. Suddenly, a few MQ-9 Predators flew above the hills of the eastern side of the valley. At first, the defenders of Hoffnung didn't take this threat seriously, since most of the drones were shot down by a single BAWS launch, and the few that survived it were decimated by the flak cannons positioned on the flank of the Hill.

"Strange, these drones shouldn't have come from here. There's only the railroad toward Fato there." Donner 5 pointed out, a bit worried that something might have shifted in the alliances of power that once were well set.

"This is the 32nd air defense battalion, we have intercepted some data these drones emitted. Transmitting the encrypted data zu Tauberg." A Belkan lieutenant leading the flak site that had successfully decimated the Osean UAVs sent. It was better to send those data to Tauberg, there they had the computing power to crack them, while here their IT technicians were a bit busy with finishing the overall data transfer to Blumenberg.

"Data received." One analyst at Tauberg reported twenty-five seconds later, due to their own encryption they used to protect this intel, and the communication having to go through space and the Merlin satellites to avoid the mountains between the CSB and the South-East of Nord Belka where Hoffnung was located, The Waldreich mountains.

Still, the deciphering revealed to be useless after five minutes of waiting, with the fighters having moved closer to the area instead of going for the airport. They could always eject if they hit bingo fuel, and there was plenty of spare planes to man, with many North Belkan pilots having followed the order to let Hoffnung burn, since the city was openly supporting the CSB.

Why did it reveal to be useless? Not because they weren't able to decipher it. That took them three more minutes. But after what happened, this data had become meaningless. What happened was a sudden rocket launch coming from the other side of the valley, followed by light campaign artillery. Like if someone had set a battalion of Kaliuchka on the other side of the hill.

"RTLS, opening fire on the rockets." The lead operator inside the armored railcar announced.

But by then they had understood what the shells were heading to: the RTLS itself, while the rockets were crossing the valley. And it was a bit harder to intercept shells than rockets, due to shell having greater speed and less explosive power. Even if they blew up, the shrapnels would still fall on the train. Besides, they focused their fire on the rockets, and were helped by the fighters who fire all of their last XMAAs.

The railcar suffered heavy damage from the artillery shell barrage, but the two third of the rockets were destroyed. By then, the path of the rockets had been figured out by the Merlin satellites precise sensors, but which couldn't help since North Belka was still firing ASAT on them, and Excalibur was used to strike at some Belkans squadron trying to engage the transport craft on their way to Blumenberg. Their origin too had been seen.

"Gottverdammt, Sie feuern an der Autobahn." The Tauberg operator announced, furious as he knew what was on the highway right now: hundreds of civilians, that were still being evacuated. They couldn't evacuate all by the air, and the railroad had been destroyed by a North Belkan pilot who chose to crash on the runway.

"Woher?" Donner 3 asked, startled to see that Osea and their allies were not even trying to cause strategic damage, but pure and useless bloodshed. Their so-called "land of freedom" had fallen quite low to go to such extent.

"Aus… die Eisenbahn im Osten." He was again, shocked to see that their former Fatoan allies were siding against Hoffnung. Thus, they had sided with the allies, since Hoffnung was a target for both North Belka and the allies. North Belka hadn't attack directly, but chose to focus on the transport, hampering the transfer of Hardware to Tauberg and Blumenberg.

"Verdammt Fatoan." Iskanda swore. They were just a bunch of turncoats that were trying to stay at what they would consider to be the winning side. Even if that side suffered massive hardware losses, both for Osea with the EMP disaster, and North Belka since Hoffnung would not supply them anymore, and apparently Sudentor had chosen to enact some "aggressive neutrality" and had ceased to supply North Belka in hardware too. But not in basic needs or energy.

"Ziel in Sicht!" Donner 7 added, after having fly over the hills for sometimes, followed by four other Hoffnung defenders no thirsty for Osean blood.

There, in some plains, two trains filled to the brim with howitzer were idle, having stopped their motion to fire, as well as too deploy the small artillery pieces they used to destroy the RTLS. They had deploy some self-propelled CWIS, but now some of the artillery servants were doubting of their air defenses, as the five F-35X fired their missiles and their guns, taking some Osean bullets in the process, but killing and injuring a good number of artillery servants. And the top armor of the self-propelled CWIS was not that thick, at least not thick enough to counter such punishment.

"Noch einmal." Donner 3 ordered, and the five aircraft flew away from the target for some seconds, before rushing on their last defenses, gun blazing.

"CWIS down, they are now dead." Iskanda cheered, trying not to think to all of those civilians that had been crushed by the volley of rockets. She then proceeded to attack the right train in a joint attack with Donner 7 and 8, while 3 and five kept killing the servants of the artillery pieces, not leaving them one single chance to reach the relative cover of the train. Each of them was firing gun bursts and one missile on each howitzer, which were set ablaze quickly.

Of course, this destruction wasn't missed by the Osean commander, who as he witnessed the death and mayhem in that plain toned to the train driver:

"Full speed back. Enter the tunnel."

"But sir, there is still some of our men trying to get on the train." The driver noted, not wanting to let all of the servants die, as the Belkans were mercilessly gunning them down.

"It's hopeless. These Belkans are as dangerous as that Ustian journalist." The officer, which had some metallic mask covering the lower half of his face, stigmata of a very painful chemical burn a few weeks ago, from which only his charred lips were protruding.

"Now, Full speed back or I do that myself After getting your lifeless body out of my way!" Ransack threatened his driver, drawing his pistol to add the gesture to the speech.

" Okay, calm down sir. Full back it is." The train driver gave up his hope of saving his comrade, disengaging the brakes and putting the diesel turbine to full power.

And it was the good time to go, because in the next minutes, the burst rockets that must have caused so much death on the Belkan highway burst inside their magazine, on the other train. The explosion tore the train in pieces, while propelling burning metallic parts in all directions. No Belkan took any damage from that, but the few Oseans that had gotten out of the train were pierced by the fast-moving objects like if they were shot at dawn.

However, the fate of the first train was not a certainty yet. Iskanda was determined to make it a certain death, following the train into the small tunnel. Which was wide enough to fly through it, since it was made to let pass two trains at the same time.

"Does she have some tunnel fetishism or what?" Donner 8 sighted, as he saw her do her second inside flight of the day. Herself didn't know how many she had done by now. Maybe a dozen, more or less. Sure, it was extraordinary risky, but there was no glory without danger.

And, feeling the adrenaline running through her was reminding her of the fantastic night she spent yesterday. She did go very close to the death once more, but it had been worth it. Like engaging those ADFX-01 had been to.

The tunnel was light up with some small reddish lines, so this time she didn't need to fire any missile to light her path. Besides, she saw the back red lights of the train only a half-minute after getting into the tunnel, flying at eight hundred kilometers when train like that would go four times slower.

Yet, this time her approach wasn't unnoticed by the soldier onboard the train, with the tunnel reverberating the sound of her engine. Soon, they activated a few lights on the train, and some tried to shoot her down using submachine guns. Tracers grazed her, illuminating the dark place, while she fired back two missiles on the back of the train, vaporizing some of the soldiers that had climbed on its roof. She then gunned the driver post, shattering the wing shield in a thousand pieces with a great crystalline sound. Two more missiles followed the gun burst, exploding inside the train, injuring many of Ransack's men and killing more than a dozen.

The man himself fell to the ground, as he was looking at a map of their surroundings. The next Fatoan base where they could join the allied or even asked for reinforcements was too far away to try to contact them. They would all die to this fighter if they didn't do anything soon, he admitted as he was standing up again.

"Fire at the tunnel with the burst rockets." He shouted dryly to his servants that were a bit startled by the nonsensical order. If they attempt that, it might crumble on them. But it would crumble on their pursuer as well.

"But sir, we might get trapped!" A fire control officer intervened, knowing that even steel-reinforced concrete would not fare well against these burst rockets made to destroy bunkers or to saturate aegis ship in naval warfare.

"Fire, I said. Execute that order. Now!" Je shouted once more, as the fighter was now flying alongside the train.

Right now, Iskanda was flying in a very dangerous way, having done a quarter of barrel-roll to the left, with her bays now facing the train. She fired two missiles at the train side, which dented its side like if a giant punch had hit it. The hull hadn't been utterly breached, like her LAGM once did to the RTLSs at Directus, but the blast had projected a great quantity of metallic fragment inside the train, reaping Ransack's men once more.

Which caused him to shout in desperation, as the fighter was slowly overrunning them:

"Fire. Now or It's your head that's gonna take fire!" He threatened the FCO once more, and he finally agreed to act below the threat.

"Firing howitzer one and two." He sent the firing sequence to the howitzer in front of the craft.

Iskanda was first shaken with horror when she saw the blast of the explosion. She had already had a hard time leveling after she fired at the train while flying tilted, but here it was ten time more. Her fighter's right wing hit the wall hard, and through the shockwave the wing was shattered and vanished into the air. In an attempt to avoid another of these situations, she kicked the afterburners to their peak, overrunning the train.

"She's leaving a trail of flame behind her. We hit her in the tank, and she used her burners. Now she's just flying with a wick on her back." One of the operators observed through one of the windows, as the tunnel was illuminated by the bright flames.

"Increase speed, I want to see that Belkan bastard blowing up sky-high." Ransack wanted to see this Belkan's demise dearly. Nothing would be better than to see their F-35X exploding like a stick of dynamite.

"We can't, sir. The turbine number 2 and 3 have suffered damage from the shockwave. We're trying to reboot them, but it will take some time. Furthermore, the steering mechanism has been compromised." One of the drivers on the other driving post transmitted, as the train was slowing due to these damages.

*Fine. But make sure we go fast enough, so I'll at least see her burning remains falling." He ranted, as some failing machines were depriving him of this simple pleasure.

Iskanda, wasn't happy about her situation. Luckily for her, the tunnel had no great curves, so she could see the light at its end quite quickly, having gone above Mach by now. Going above Mach had finished to rip off the last standing pieces of her right wing.

She should have asked to Pixy a bit more how to fly with only one wing. And he made it with a F-15C, a worldly known fighter for its durability, which was not hampering its mobility too much. Still, her fighter was a pain in the * to maintain stable on the roll axis, while her alarm was assaulting her with high pitch tones. Of course, she could understand why the structural integrity was red, since her fighter had lost quite a bit of integrity. Made it was as decent as its pilot, by now.

Somehow, she was outpacing the trail of flames that had come from her right fuel tank, punctured when her wing had been ripped off. It wasn't a big leak, and as such she would keep that trail of flames for quite a while if she didn't manage to extinguish it. It was only if the flames didn't catch up with her first.

 **Near the Belkan-Fato Border, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:30, Weather: high stratus**

Iskanda was now leaving the tunnel, and climb right after leaving hit, hoping to cut the trail of flames still hanging at her craft. She still had a third of her right fuel tank, and she feared that the flames might catch with her if she didn't find some way to extinguish them. But as she climbed, a bit of fuel was thrown aside by some wind and ended up spread over on her XMAA pod. Which was more than useless against the train she would soon face, if they had kept their pace. Still, she wasn't sure if it was empty or not, and the sensor for that were a bit jammed due to the other weapon pod missing, since she lost it while losing her entire right wing.

Maybe she could detach it, and look for what outcome it would cause. It was always better to lose a bit of weight in this course against time and death. And it was removing her of the risk of having it be set ablaze when she would go down, in case the fuel spread over would take fire. Because she knew her craft would support the explosive mass of one XMAA at such proximity, especially after having taken so much punishment.

After a few seconds of reading her switches, she found it, and turn off the switch indicating "Abtrennung". It was the same word those Belkan would say when they drop these dagger-shaped drones. Thus, the magnetic lock linking the XMAA pod to her fighter's left wing was deactivated, and the small metallic part fell behind her, in the column of flame she had created in her climb.

What she feared would happen to her a few seconds ago. The pod blew up in mid-air, meaning that it was still housing a few XMAAs inside. However, the shockwave had some benefic effect, as it extinguished the flame in the blast of wind. She cut her engine and hit the deck toward some valley she saw while she was climbing. Compared to Hoffnung gigantic valley, wide of several kilometers, this one was much slimmer, maybe less than half a kilometer.

She decided not to use her afterburners again, flying solely in supercruise, and trying to conserve her momentum of her fall after her survival against this threat she didn't want to face any time soon. She would fight an ADFX-01 any day, but not escape some trail of death that almost seemed like fate was abandoning her for an instant. Even if these words didn't mean much for her. She didn't believe in fate or determinism. Right now, she had only one belief: she would obtain victory today. And she was determined to.

So, she began pouring fire onto the bridge that had been set to cross the valley, a nice metallic arc bridge. She had already see similar bridge in Erusea, made by a now old architect of the last century, with the same big metallic arc sustaining the bridge deck, and with the weight distribution rendered a bit more equal on the different parts of the metallic bridge through some other smaller metallic pyramidal constructions. Of course, if the model was good, they were nothing that could prevent Belka from reusing it a few decades later. After all they had reused 75 millimeters cannons from a war almost eighty years ago, and they worked pretty well until she trashed their operator. That bridge too, was holding pretty well its structure, until she began firing at it.

She began firing at the two main base, which housed the foundation for the main arcs and one pyramidal support. She didn't fire at the metallic itself, but at the concrete block from which the arc was protruding from. And after a few missiles, she saw concrete being slowly shattered and filled with cracks. She did the same on the two sides, and after a few minutes in which she spare half of her remaining missiles, the two main bases had suffered unfixable damage, with some of the metallic pieces now hanging over the void when they were heavily attached by concrete to the slope of the valley a bit sooner.

Her other missiles, she used them to weaken the metallic pyramids used for weight redistribution. Pieces of metal were flying with each explosion, and she could see after a few minutes that now even the small winds coming from the valley were enough to twist the bridge, like a line of boys that a wave would impact, and that would move in disharmony.

She had just finished firing her last two missiles on the metallic pyramids protruding from the main arc, near the center of the bridge, when she heard the sound of the train, that was getting out of the tunnel, eight hundred meters before the bridge. She quickly hit the deck to hide in the valley, and above all to enjoy the sealed fate of the train, the horrific trap she had just set.

On board, the atmosphere was a bit lukewarm. But it got warmer, and almost joyful when someone spotted the remains of an explosion still lingering at high altitude. It was a small one, they conceded, but maybe it was because she blew up without many ammos left.

"Now that Belkan scum is dead. Let's cross the bridge and go back to the Osean base Fato had let us create." Ransack announced. He wouldn't have been happier than if his trooper had captured that damned Ustian journalist that had now scarred him for life.

"Still, how can they be so naive… We won't let them have a piece of Belkan territory. However, we won't support Gebet and Recta if Fato try to take land from them, since they refused to join the allied forces." One of his closest lieutenants, that shared deeply his hate of the Belkans -and now of the Ustians as well-, almost disclosed how Osea was disposing of their supposedly allies. They were nothing but tools that would eventually become obsolete, like almost anything Osea was creating after all.

The train was already engaged on the bridge, when they heard a sudden explosion : Iskanda, having no more weaponry, gave it all out, and flew below the first weight distributor she had critically damaged, timing her speed so she would hit the Mach while crossing the bridge. The shockwave would have usually done nothing to such structure that was made to support heavy wind. But for the weakened and crippled metallic structure, the shockwave that went through all the metallic components of the bridge was the last straw. The deck of the bridge twisted terrifically, almost making the train derail, while metallic parts were set loose, with stud being projected in all directions, as their mechanic resistance was overload.

"Stop that train!" Ransack bellowed, as the bridge was already beginning to collapse, no deeply worried, and understanding how easy it was to believe in a good victory he thought he own when you would only get what you deserve, which would be a utter defeat soon.

"We can't. Mechanism were damaged when you ordered to fire at the tunnel wall." A horrified driver answered, stuttering due to the terror that his imminent death was making him feel. He had activated the emergency brake, but they wouldn't hold. They would only slow down the train, and even if they were fully functioning, the train wouldn't have stopped before the middle of the bridge, at least.

"Then jump! Try to, before it's too late." Ransack left his post with haste, knocking over some terrified mens that the overrush of adrenaline caused by such danger was creating for some, and was causing them to stay idle in front of death.

"Now, fall to hell, Oseans. You wanted to make it rain on these people, but it's opening right for you." Iskanda taunted, them, as the train was slowly gliding on the collapsing bridge. She went for a final gun run, as people were trying to jump from it, acting in desperation in front of a certain death. She surely reaped multiple Osean by doing so, but didn't know where the leader jumped from, so she wasn't sure about his fate.

A few seconds later, as she was gunning from above one of its rocket launcher that took fire, the fall finally happened. The weight, and the force that the motion of the train had transmitted through the deck of the bridge were too much for its weaken structure, and this time, the whole metallic arc went loose, with metallic part moving fast with strange metallic noise, like an extremely low guitar, or maybe a contrabass. But outside of this sonic performance, the more beautiful thing to her was to see the train capsizing and falling in flame to the ground. Apparently, her last bit of gun fire had caused a fire to grow within the train. Ablaze parts fell to the bottom of the valley, accompanied by screams of terror from the still onboard crew on the waves, before the deafening sound of a big explosion filled the valley, suppressing any noise.

What was left were burning parts, were ammo kept exploding in chains, propelling burning metallic parts and burning human remains high in the valley, while the bridge had lost its entire deck. What was left of him were the base of the pyramidal weight distributor, facing the sky like a row of red teeth. There was quite a high likelihood that there were a few survivors that managed to jump in time and maybe even escaped her bullets. But she was trusting her wolf friends to make their life hard until they get to the allied frontline. Which closest point might be Glatisant, with the few strangled Osean troops there having established some base into the ruins of the fortress, having great troubles at getting supplies and having to fend off attacks of Belkan survivors that had the knowledge of terrain with them.

Their fate would be theirs to decide, even if it had been sealed for most of them, and even for the few that believed being in charge, their fate wasn't theirs anymore. Osea had decided for them, and it would be death, sooner or later. They chose to pick up the wrong fight when entering her battlespace were she was expecting only one thing : victory.

And it's with thoughts of this well-deserved victory that she contacted her new Belkan friends at Hoffnung, while she was pulling a slow U-turn, wanting not to lose control of her solo-winged F-35X. She could bet Pixy would feel some sort of pride, if he knew that she managed to fly such a fighter for so long with only one wing. Maybe she even beat him at his own game, because so far, he hadn't bragged about doing inside flight while in "Solo Wing".

"Schwarze Luchs zu Hoffnung, Bahn Zerstören. RZB (Train Destroyed Rück Zu Base, RTB)." She happily announced infirming the few that though she died and asserting the majority that had rooted for her survival.

"Ver. We will wait for you to do the debriefing. Don't take too much time." The voice of the man in charge of Hoffnung's defense, Oswin Neugel, respond, relieved to heard of her success.

Her back travel would be a calm one, other the mountains that housed that tunnel. Nothing crazy on this way. She had her fair share of craziness for the day, and even for the month, she thought after all the events that had happened today, since midnight, from the Hexenjagd to this final act. But was it truly the final act of the day? After all, it was only midday. Maybe this spectacle would be a four-act one. There was enough theatrics in it, definitively…

 **Bienenstock Airbase, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 12:45, Weather: medium cloud coverage**

To say that Iskanda's landing was arduous was an understatement. It was harder than arduous, with his aircraft having lost its right wing. Still, the sharklets on the almost pristine left wing -it wasn't pristine by any means, but it could be considered as such in comparison with the right wing- were helping a bit in enabling her a bit of stability as she landed. Now she was almost regretting her landing with her ULM this morning, in which she was shaken away like a leaf in the tempest, but she had still some bits of control over her craft. There she had none.

"Will she make it?" One of the operators in the control tower shared his worries, as the flying wreckage was lowering its gear. Luckily for Iskanda, she hadn't lost her right rear gear when her right wings were ripped off.

"She managed to fly all the way back here from the bridge, and before in a tunnel. So, she had good chances, I would say." Their commander Oswin Neugel deduced, after having watched this new pilot's every move since her take off. She was quite a tough girl to be sure.

And in the end, they were both relieved to see the F-35X being stopped by the emergency landing system, that used some network of cable to do so. Iskanda was a bit shaken by the sudden stop, but this little deceleration was almost irrelevant compared to all the Gs she had had to bear today. Still, it was a pretty tired that some rescue crew helped out of her fighter, since she had a bit of trouble stepping down from it, due to the damage it had taken on every corners.

A few minutes later, she was back in the briefing room, seeing the ZHW software loading screen. Last time she hadn't the opportunity to see it. It was quite a simplistic one, even if it was a bit more elaborated that the twin mountains of Axe and Hammer : the three letters were written in italic letters, stuck between two trails made by what was supposed to represent the exhaust of a stylized fighter jet, that was almost looking like some arrowhead, and the second trail was made of a propeller fighter, maybe a BF-109 or a FW-190, she couldn't say.

Maybe she could try flying one of these relics of another one for fun, she thought as she saw the logo disappear, to see another infamous logo appear, even if she had never seen it by herself, the logo of the Pendragon Projekt, with Excalibur inside a circle, a Su-47 and a ADFX-01 nearby, and the name of the Projekt wrote in medieval letters around the circle. After all, most of the Pendragon Projekt seemed to have come from here. Last proof up to date: the presence of a RTLS here.

"The results of this morning's operation are… mitigated to say the least." Oswin Neugel began the debriefing, as the screen displayed the city of Hoffnung in her croissant-shaped valley, with the two small fighting forces leaving it at the South and the North. There, the numbers of the Osean and Yukte fighters they had downed was huge to Iskanda, but not that much to the other pilots.

"The number of losses they suffered might be above the hundreds, drone and QF-fighters taken into consideration. However, we loss a few planes, and the RTLS is beyond repair due to this last rocket and artillery attack. Civilian losses in the lost transport and on the bombed highway have not been counted yet, but we might hope to have a number between one and two thousand."

"But the last attack revealed one thing that threaten our current situation even more : The Rald-led North Belka, and their Fatoan allies, are ready to let Osea cross their airspace to annihilate us. We might have to expect more forces coming from the East. That can also explain how these Yukte managed to come from the North." He continued the briefing, with the software zooming out, to display some base of Fato and North Belka, including Anfang, Dinsmark and Dinsmarkhaven, and in Fato, the Bayes Fortress, that had been repaired since Iskanda's arrival in Ustio, months ago.

"Furthermore, some of the ears and eyes of the Pendragon Projekt have reported that Osea and Yuktobania are mobilizing old high-altitude spy-planes prototypes to turn them into supersonic high-altitude mediumweight bomber." A final arrow was drawn, coming from Osea, with unknown forces this time.

"That's understandable, since Excalibur had lost in power with the generator being relocated right now, and also with the destructive power of the Merlin satellites decreasing with altitude." Neugel finished the briefing, with some proposition for these unknowns being listed near the bottom of the arrow that was situated in the middle of Osea. Among the suggested names were the YF-12 Oxcart Interceptor, which had given the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-104 starfighter and the X-15 prototype, used more to train astronauts than fighter pilots, and from Yuktobania, only the letter R-020 were written. Which was of course some references to a fighter, but Iskanda had no idea of what it could be. She didn't know that the Yukte had high-altitude supersonic jets. Or they would be like these A-12 Avengers the Osean were pushing into service, cancelled planes that were used because it was less costly to make them fly again than scrap them and use the new resources, and maybe less time-consuming too.

"I doubt of the high-altitude capacities of the F-35X. In low altitudes, that's a good craft." Iskanda intervened, with at this moment no idea on to how to stop these high-altitude infiltrators.

"Ich anerkenne, Frau Schwarze Luchs. Aber vielleicht werden wir eine Lösung dieses Problems finden. (I recognize, Miss Dark Bobcat. but maybe we'll find a solution to this issue)." Oswin shared the mind of this unknown pilot about this multirole which effectiveness had been greatly increased by their new variant, but not to such an extent.

"Ich hoffe wir werden einigen finden, und schnell (I hope we'll find one, and fast)." Donner 3 had not much optimism about their survival. Especially with the Wunderwaffe doing less Wunder.

"Wir haben ein bisschen Zeit. Unseres Spiones haben gelernt, dass die Osean Angreife am Nacht stattfinden wird. (we have a bit of time. Our spies have learnt, that the Osean attack will take place at night). Jetzt ruhen Sie sich aus (now go get some rest). " Oswin tried to boost a bit the diminishing morale of his pilot. He knew they would fight to the Death to defend their city, but he didn't want any useless death either and wasn't a franc supporter of any kind of martyrdom. War were won by the survivors, not the sacrifices. And his last sentence was because he had seen half of his pilots yawing at least twice since the beginning of this briefing.

"Ich denke wir werden.(I think we will)" Iskanda asserted, trying to figure a way to reach these infiltrators with their available hardware.

"Untergrund Flug wird nicht funktionieren gegen solches Jagdflugzeug. (Underground flight won't work against such fighters" Donner 8 retorted her, as they were on their way to the Belkan mess hall, were some high nutritive food was waiting for them, among them some Rösti, these roasted hash brown.

And as they eat some's, feeling exhausted from this long flight. The Belkan had even more reason to feel exhausted, as this kind of morning was their daily routine since a few days and the beginning of the evacuation of Hoffnung. They had already seen some other Kulaks, QF-4 and QF-16s and some A-12, when these two units had been utter surprises for Iskanda. Yet, their use in such high numbers meant that Osea had lost their cool, and was throwing everything they could at the city, which had now only four planes ready to defend, and only one third of its initial defenses still in good state.

She had one person she wanted to talk right now, after their lunch. She wanted to know about Vasquez, at least to know her state, after all she had went through those last few days.

 **Sand Island, West Osea, 11/06/1995, 14:00, light marine wind**

The weather was light, his fighter was light after having dropped all of his weapons after leaving Hoffnung to fly faster. But his mind, and his heart were not light at all, as he, the former second in command of Mage squadron and its unique survivor of Operation Hell Bound, was on his approach to the cemented sandbar that Sand Island was. The name of the place was fitting at least. Even if to be honest, name such as "purgatory island" or "trash archipelago" could have also fit very well.

"The last convict is arriving." The control tower operator announced with a feelingless and disdainful voice.

"Your bit of freedom in the air is over. Drag your delayed ass in there." Was what the welcoming committee told him, as soon as he landed. Welcoming committee made of MPs used as watchdogs on this island. Both pilots and their guardians were forbidden to display any emotions between one another, and any display of anything was severely reprimanded. In comparison of this almost warm Island with ice-cold welcome, his little time at Valais had been the complete opposite: ice-cold mountains, but much warmer welcome.

The briefing was same as usual, with their commander, a man named Quantrill, ranting about their failures at destroying anything of major importance at Hoffnung. He didn't rant about their losses. That, he would never do. They were just good to be use as cannon fodders or as operatives to do Osea's dirty works. First, Osea had tried to rely on mercenaries to do such kind of dirty works, but even the most heartless, brutal and greedy mercenaries were showing reluctance to fly under the threat of being vaporized by what seem to most to be overworldly weaponry.

"You are just a big bundles of weak, pathetic deserters. For once I wish we would have a deserter hunting squadron like the Vulture so I wouldn't have to see your face of losers here."

"Yeah, and that Kupchenko guy would surely turn them against you too?" One of the pilots, that had fled onboard his F-16C when he had realized what they were asking them to do, dare to speak.

"You. Solitary without water." The emotionless voice of their commander was suddenly filled with anger as he ordered the MPs of the room to escort that man to a short sojourn in hell: metallic cell in plain sun, without water. Nobody would comply for a week when they put out of those cells after one day, at the limit of exhaustion or dehydration. Their health wasn't a meaningful factor here either, Spare 15 had learned too. The day of his arrival, he was greeted with a half day of Solitary, since the commander learned why he had been sent there: refusing to listen to orders and following the orders of Ustians instead of his leader's.

"You only destroyed one plane entirely, and it wasn't even a military supply. Even if I won't cry about some Belkan death. The only good Belkan is a dead one." He continued to throw his tantrum at his unfortunate pilots, who for the few that survived, had not such hatred toward the Belkans. They were taught to hate them, but they weren't willing to kill all of them, like the F-14D pilot attempted, and paid with their life above the city of Hope. Then, a small map of Hoffnung was displayed, with showed the action of some unit they hadn't seen, since all of them had already fled by that time.

"Luckily for us, major Ransack killed quite a good number of those hopeless people, and actually manage to do your job!" The software displayed the destruction of the RTLs, obviously not through sat cams since there was no satellites still active above Belka, but through some 3D animation that could surely been updated, which showed only structure made of blue lines instead of more realistic ones.

"I bet he's dead now." Another pilot interrupted the briefing, knowing that there was a good likelihood that the same pilot that killed their F-14D pilots he didn't even remember would have not let such killer escape alive.

"I hope you'll be to next mission. Solitary without water!" Quantrill showed only utter disdain at this pilot that somehow had deduced the truth about the becoming's of Ransack. His armored train had been annihilated by the Hoffnung defenders, and there was no news of survivors.

"But that won't matter to you. You didn't do crap there, only downed two fighters for a laughable kill ratio, and less defense systems than Ransack's men. All of you, Solitary without water." He continued his ranting about his useless pilots, that wouldn't achieve anything, and hadn't achieved anything meaningful today. After all, there were just convicts, and using them as such was only shortening the time before the death penalty was effective, and making room in Osean penitentiary, which had been filled by looters and other human waste since the EMP disaster.

"Sir, I'm…" Spare 15 dare to speak, but was rudely interrupted by a MP that almost pistol-whipped him with his submachine gun, not wanting any talk before solitary. Besides, these convicts had already been foolish enough to interrupt their commander two times, and he wouldn't allow a third. The pilot stumbled on one chair as he ducked was lunging forward to evade the strike, and thus fell hard on another row of chair, with his forehead hitting one metallic chair leg hard.

"Do you want to be in Solitary for two days without water this badly, Spare 15?" The commander asked him, as he watched the almost knocked out pilot being supported by two MPs that didn't look at him a single bit. He wasn't worth their attention, and his wound at his forehead would cause them to care for him a single bit.

"No, sir. but I have…" he tried to speak, but another MP silenced him by thrusting the hilt of his gun into his gut, cutting his breath and causing him to stumble to the ground, breathless.

"You wanted to say something, perhaps?" Quantrill faint to show false sympathy for the now injured pilots that hadn't fled first. But he still fled, and that wouldn't earn him any true sympathy.

The injured pilot pushed a bit on his forearm so he could at least stare at the commander. If he could, he would have thrown him a death glare, but he hadn't such possibility, and he didn't want to have that two-day penalty. Still, he dared to speak to his commander, that made a small gesture to prevent one MPs to strike at the weakened pilot once more. He would have possessed a bit more of fighting spirit a bit more this morning, but having to fight that Schwarze Luchs pilot that he couldn't even graze with his weaponry while seeing her killing relentlessly his squadmates while laughing at him like a mad woman had taken a toll on him.

"I… may have recognized the new Belkan pilot. It's… Galm 1." He was disgusted by his own action, now. Why did he needed to say that, again? He was only betraying the only person in the entire military that showed him a bit of support and allow him to live once. But such allowance didn't seem to be free. And it had costed the life of so many Oseans.

"I hate liars. Spitting on the name of a MIA, that's not good at all." Quantrill harshly replied, not believing that mercs were turncoats. He knew Belkans were, but that one wasn't Belkan, as far as he knew.

"I swear… That aggressivity… It was her…" Spare 15 tried to argue but was knocked out by a MP. They had heard enough excuses from that pilot that had obtained only a single kill, and it wasn't a full kill, since the Belkan pilot had survived the engagement, from what they could see on the gun cams.

"I might transmit that, still. Wait for the OIA response before putting him into his cell." Quantrill specified, as he went for his office and let the now unconscious pilot to the not good care of the MPs.

Thus, after what seemed to be a few hours later, but only had been twenty minutes for the restrained Spare 15 that had been put into an cell inside of the building, and had lost a bit the notion of time -watches were not allowed here, and all personal belongings were confiscated the seconds you landed here-, the commander showed right in front of the bars of his cell.

"Their analysts have some reliable intel that might confirm your foolish excuses. Now bring him to Solitary." The commander was not that happy to hear that even money couldn't buy the loyalty of mercs nowadays. Such unorthodox mercs were only as good as dead Belkans, and deserve similar fate.

The MPs dragged him out of his cell, and kept dragging him to the confinement area, were the solitary cells were situated, crossing the runway that was as long as the island and made any take-off and landing quite dangerous. By now, Spare 15 hoped that his penalty had been decreased to only one day, as he crashed into the metallic walls of his cell that had already been heated by the nice sun of June.

"That's for you, snitcher." he tossed him a bottle of water without any marks on it. Just plain plastic. After all, if he owed that merc his life, that man was definitively worthless to give her identity like that.

Spare 15 tried to drink a bit of water, all exhausted that he was from his long flight between Hoffnung and here. They had only authorized them to do one stop to refuel on their way in and out. No mid-air refueling or external tanks, they were worried that if they gave them to much fuel they would try to flee to neutral countries such as Wellow or Wieldvakia.

But then he was caught by the carelessness of his heartless and rude commander, that had filled the said bottle with seawater. It would only increase his dehydration if he drank that bottle. There was no worse punishment to give that to a thirsty man. As he threw the bottle away, he saw MPs passing buy laughing, laughing harsh and loud, in pure mockery. And with his mind getting foggy with the dehydration slowly beginning, that almost acted if he was drunk, since drinking dehydrated too, he was seeing himself back in Valais once more, drinking Glühwein and feeling relieved to have survived. Now he was just feeling guilty to have survived, and actually envied Mage 4, the one that survived the first onslaught, only to be killed by the Barbicans over Glatisant. He had died as a free man, at least. While he would be forever in those chains, and without any chances to see his daughter and wife he left at Oured, that would never have any widow's pension, since the army would not pay any pension for the families of betrayers, thieves, criminals and deserters..

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 15:00, high stratus**

Perrault had asked him to come to the briefing room. He knew that the battle would be this evening, but he didn't expect him to have a briefing so soon. Besides, it couldn't be a briefing, because he asked for only him, Larry Foulke, to be here and not the Oseans that had come here to be part of the bombing, the ones with fighters carrying phosphorous ordnance.

There was something wrong here, Pixy saw it the moment he entered the room. No one except Perrault and two Osean soldiers were here, and for an unknown reason, they were carrying weapons outside their sidearms. Even if there were no risks for anyone here. Even without the snow, these mountains were dangerous enough to make the travel not worth the price, even for trained Belkan Kommandos.

The second thing that he found weird was that the software he saw on the display screen was not the usual Axe and Hammer one, bearing the twin mountains logo, but a rather different one. One he never liked to see, because when he had to do jobs as a mercs for them, it often involved very "dirty" tasks, that were more than often not worth their time, nor the money they offered for. And there was even sometimes where he ended up fighting operatives of this organization, if he had been recruited as a merc to watch over some sensitive factory that this very organization wanted to take pictures of. This is why Pixy had three U-2 kills under his belt. Even if he had not taken any glory from taking down those glorified gliders.

The symbol was a big blue circle, with the words "OSEAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY" in white and set alongside the upper limit of the circle. Below it where an eagle partially covered by a medieval-like shield ornamented with the white and blue six-star flag of Osea. Behind the bird was some dodecagonal white star. He had heard once that the number twelve was to make some religious reference. After all, Osea loved to do such, since they were often considering themselves to be some god special envoys tasked to spread truth and democracy on the world, even if their truth was biased and their so-righteous democracy crippled by corruptions of their industrial oligarchs. The lower part contained some goldish medieval-like banner with the words "Osean federation" in it.

"What does the OIA want to me? Last time it was not to speak about the weather." Pixy asked, the last time being when he shot down two of his three U-2s. Of course, how could have he and his former leader known that these U-2s had an explosive charge, that a simple gun burst that was only meant to incapacitate the spy-plane triggered.

"Mercenary Larry Foulke. Before this war and Excalibur killing our spy planes in droves, you're the one that caused our highest casualties." The anonymized voice of an operative of the OIA spoke with disdain, like he was speaking to some underlings. But that was common with the OIA : throw a spanner into the works, and they will hate you, and support once a spy plane, and they'll praise you like if you saved their president for death or something like that.

"Yeah, and if you want that to increase, I'm sure I can always try to buy some Belkan ERAAMs and try them on your SR-71s. Cut the smart talk, Chris Pitt." Pixy retorted harshly. Even if his fighter was not made to carry those, he was sure there was some way to put then on an F-15C. They had managed to put them on those modified single-seater F-14s and F-4s, after all.

"Foulke, this is not the common talk in peace time. But the extraordinary one of wartime." Pitt replied, surprised to know that his name was known. Maybe Pixy had contacts he didn't know off. That might have links to what he was about to announce, perhaps.

"Spit it out, Pitt. I'm not in the mood for quizzes." Pixy expressed his utter will to finish ASAP his talk with any member of the OIA.

"Fine. You have heard of the new Belkan ace, an unknown woman with the callsign "Schwarze Luchs"?" He inquired to verify his sources, while the logo vanished to display the two fighter she had flown this far, a black Su-47 with modified weaponry and increased mobility, and lately, this morning to be precise, a F-35X, unknown model for Pixy.

"Yeah, cross her path a bit above B7R." Pixy admitted that he had met this one. They stole each other's kills that day, at some point, if he recalled correctly.

"You'll be surprised by what I'm about to disclose. This woman would be your former MIA leader, Iskanda Rayien." Pitt began to explain the discovery of their unofficial scouts.

"Was ist diese schlechte Witze? (what's that bad joke)" He shouted as he interlocutor, not willing to hear about the fate of his leader they sacrificed to try to kill Kupchenko on the ground. Which was a failure, since the men had showed himself to be well alive and had even sent some medical data to journalist to assert that Osea had failed their attempt.

"It is not a "Witze". But a certainty. From that day she's now considered as a traitor to the allied forces, and a prime target to be shot down without warning." The OIA analyst was dead serious, and almost showing some pleasure to announce that this person that had already kill quite a lot of sailors at Futuro was truly a traitor. The picture of the two planes were replaced by a picture of his leader, apparently taken without her consent nor her knowing it, since her eyes were not staring to the cam on the picture. Picture that was complemented by a red banner "WANTED", with the list of her crimes : espionage, first and second degree murder, desertion, mass murder, illegal possession of allied hardware, and terrorism -since Osea was considering any secessionist that were linked to Kupchenko to be terrorist and not soldiers-.

"I don't believe you. What's your source? A U-2 that Excalibur splashed I guess?" Pixy spat venom at the analyst. He was not seeing Iskanda siding with the person that had caused the death of almost all her wingmen and the disappearance of their superior any day.

"A reliable one. An Osean pilot doing aggressive reconnaissance." Pitt gave a false response, since there was no certainty with the origin of the intel, their penal units. However, Osea was not supposed to have penal units in the first place, so he would not brag about it.

"If that's reliable, then the aggressive neutrality of Fato is pacifism." Pixy cut the explanation of the OIA analyst, that was almost relieved to be cut so he wouldn't have to expand on his explanation.

"Like it or not, that's the truth." Perrault intervened, quite annoyed to see this merc speaking without any respect to the OIA.

"That's your truth. Not mine. Call me when they'll be a real briefing." Pixy snapped back, before barging out of the room, not wanting to hear any defenses from the Oseans about their inabilities. Of course, the armored doors didn't slam as much as he wanted to explain his resentment toward the OIA. They were just not good at their jobs, not gaining any grounds, failing at gaining intel since their satellite network had become a game of space invader on low difficulty for the Excalibur operators and now, they were using MIAs as scapegoats.

Pixy spent quite a lot of the day trying to ease out his anger about these nonsensical assertions. There was no way he was seeing Iskanda betray Ustio. She had fight so hard for the liberation of this country, that having her turn her coat in such an expected manner was something that wasn't understandable to him.

Surprisingly, the one that managed to calm the mercenary was the only turncoat of the base, Friedrich von Hervin, that had refused to leave his city. And refused to let any Belkan fire at it in their attempt to enact any scorched land policies. He gave Pixy his own mind about what he considered to have done. He had gone rogue, that was certain, but did he become a traitor? He said it depended on the point of view.

"I won't say I didn't betray the chain of command or the Belkan occupation forces. They have good reason to see me as a traitor."

"Well, you opened fire on their Major, I guess that won't play in your favor." Pixy recalled how the CH-17 of the fleeing Sturmbannführer went down, blown sky-high by a SAM volley. Quite a sinister fate.

"I fired on someone who was refusing to admit the defeat and stand." He defended his action that day. He had the blood of his countrymen on his hands, he knew it. Even if his current interlocutor, on the other side of the table, had without any doubt a hundred times more blood on his hand than he had.

"That's almost the point of view of the Vulture: Flucht ist Tod." Pixy quoted this man he was settled on not to fight since he saw him in action above B7R. Even if he had not shown much mercy than Zubov against the Grabacr, and even more aggressivity against this specific squad than Zubov against the deserters. Or at least as much.

"But that's their point of view. Not mine." Hervin added, not wanting to be seen as a Belkan but as a single individual with his own chain of thoughts.

"And what's yours, then?" Pixy wanted to know what he was thinking of his own betrayal.

"In my heart, I don't think of myself as a traitor. My actions have always been aligned with my motives and my convictions: to fight for the peace and safety of my people. Not to conquer others and enforce false notion of peace and security." Hervin explained what he consider what all people fighting should strive to, even if most of them had become warmongers fed with false pride and false glory.

"The last reason, it's your critics of the Oseans, isn't it ?" Pixy was just verifying that he had the same mind that Koenig about the motives of Osea.

"Affirmation: it is. And the other one is the critics of the Rald-led Belka. Both are not more righteous. Humanity won't gain anything from wars of annihilation." Hervin went a bit philosophic with his last sentence. He knew Pixy was a good man, and a soldier able to think, rarity on the battlefield.

"But what as all of this to do with their supposed betrayal of my MIA leader?" Pixy hadn't forgotten the almost proofless accusation of the Oseans. What did they know of her? Next to nothing. But what did he know of her? Only two chapter of her life, one a bit bloodier, and that was it.

"I meant, that she has maybe committed what the Osean and their cheeriest OIA consider to be betrayal. But she might be considering this otherwise, and to be something that need to be done, for what she believes is right." Hervin applied to Iskanda his chain of thoughts, that was not branding her as a traitor, but as someone who was chosen to fight, and would keep fighting.

"That's…. an interesting point of view." Pixy nodded, somewhat satisfied with the argument of Hervin. It wasn't a perfect point of view either.

That, at least gave Pixy a bit of a middle-ground between an Osean misthinking and his leader being a full-blow traitor. But right now, he would have wanted to scream, to reach out to her, in the hope of at least hearing her mad laugh on the radio. He didn't have many questions that required answers, only a few. Where was she? In the sky, without any doubt. Whether she was dead or alive, she would be in the sky. What was she doing? She was fighting. She was a resilient and persistent warrior. He knew she could survive the impossible to keep fighting.

Still, and with this new situation, Pixy had only one feeling about the war. Gone were the bright day of the heroic reconquest of Ustio, with the greatest victory being the liberation of Directus. The victory stopped after that day, and the war had descended into an abyss of darkness. Darkness grows, and light to meet it, he knew that proverb very well. But he knew that wars were not just fought by fighter, soldier, sailors or marines on the battlefield, but in the heart of all human being. Yet, in all his year of war, he had seen human nature at its core. And there was no light there. But maybe he was mistaken. And maybe there was still Hope, even the eponymous city was burning.

 **End of the chapter.  
(Damn, that's a long one, the longest so far, 34000words, hence the division by two)  
I have chosen to introduce a few things here: some penal units, after all Osea and Yuktobania had become quite desperate. The flying wing A-12 Avenger II, who was supposed to be a stealth plane for carriers, and the "Belkan" F-35. I have brought back a few characters I have introduce a few chapters prior to this one, and it's not their end.  
About Hoffnung (hope), I do think the mayor's speech is a bit influenced by the blue lantern oath "In fearful day, in raging night, with strong hearts full, our souls ignite. when all seems lost in the War of Light, look to the stars, for hope burns bright!"  
All might seem lost, indeed. The canon is lost. Only for a new story to strive, with new hopes. Will it be a better one? That, to the future to decide.  
Well, I won't go too philosophic, since there's still two chapter to this arc of Hoffnung, and I have not finished the changes soon.  
Feel free to comment, review, like and favor… Und bis nächst mal, Lesern und Leserinnen**


	25. Ersten Morde (first kills)

**Some room of the Bienenstock Air Base, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 15:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage**

In a bed of crisp white sheets, she was laying, monitored, and fed through IV. Like Iskanda, they had to undergo some dialysis in order to remove a bit of the poison still lingering in her body, and she had now some dressing all over her wrists. She could also count a great number of dressings here and there, where the Hexen had put those tiny electrodes through her skin.

And right now, as she was waking up from the chemically induced coma that they had to put her in as forced rest, she was met with the face of the very person she didn't know if she needed to congratulate or condemn.

"I'll never forgive you for what you did to my leader. You rendered him tetraplegic!" The Sapin pilot preferred to begin with the bad news.

"Look, I'm sorry about that. Really." Iskanda apologized, trying to put a bit of compassion in her gaze as she looked down toward the hospital bed. She tried to put some honesty too but did not know if she succeeded.

She saw Vasquez roll her eyes next, meaning that either she did not believe her sincerity, or that she was not expecting such person to try to excuse herself, and thus was struck by the unexpected. Still, she did not dive into the condemnation much further, and thus jumped to the congrats:

"But I'm glad to be alive. So, gracias Schwarze Luchs." The Sapin used her new nickname, which surprised a bit the Erusean. Even if she would very likely get used to it. Galm 1 was dead above Tauberg.

"Well, everyone's always happy to be alive." Iskanda added, being happy to have survived this terrible night too.

"It wasn't your first time?" Vasquez asked out of sheer curiosity, even if with her little knowledge of Iskanda's bloody past she could have guessed with great confidence.

"Usually, when people ask about first times, it's to speak about their first affair with a man, woman or more according to their taste." Iskanda chuckled, holding on the horizontal bar in front of the bed, leaning slightly toward Vasquez.

" Har har. Very funny. You know what I mean." Vasquez chuckled in return, but on a mocking tone.

"Well, do I include the time I should have killed my biologic breeder in the list or not? I mean, I didn't kill anyone that night." She said, after having raised one hand and holding her chin with it, in a reflective manner.

"You would have liked." Vasquez asserted, knowing the reason for her almost-matricide.

"Correct." Iskanda agreed that nothing would have brought her more joy. Or maybe as much as killing all the Hexen did.

"I was speaking about your first murder. Not the first "kill" onboard a plane." Vasquez specified, guessing she had already her hands soaked with blood before even stepping in her training jet.

"Well, it was to take the place of someone to get into the Erusean Air Force." She made the short response. She did not know if Vasquez wanted the long one.

"Is there a murder required to get into this Air Force?" Vasquez rolled her eyes once more at the ceiling, not understanding why she could not simply join the Air Force without a bloodbath.

"Nope. Besides, no one had ever caught me, so legally speaking I'm clean." Iskanda imitated her interlocutor, rolling her eyes at the ceiling as if speaking of murder was as natural to her as speaking of the weather for a normally constituted mind.

"Still, why?" Vasquez wanted to understand a bit more of this mysterious woman she had falsely thought to have understood her after the operation at Futuro.

"That's a very simple and very complicated story." Iskanda began, as she was slowly remembering that fateful day, during which she tossed away her chances for a peaceful life because she just didn't want to wait for another year to try the concours for the Erusean Air Force, a pretty hard one.

 **Farbanti, Erusea, 05/07/1991, 20:30, Weather: heavy cumulonimbus, risks of thunder**

For once she did not go back straight to the convent after the classes. Her ZBM was now idle in front of the bar in which she had chosen to go to drunk herself, so she could forget her failure at the exams for the air force.

The bar was only one of the few hundreds there was in the big city of Farbanti, precisely located in the district called New Farbanti, that had been won over the sea using gigantic dikes and wave-breakers, which had the benefit to provide enough energy for half of Farbanti's inhabitants. After all, Farbanti was built between the sea and a small chain of mountains, and it was a bit easier to gain land on the sea that flatten the mountains.

The interior was a bit old fashioned, with old wooden bar stools surrounding the bar itself were the bartender was standing. Some over bar stools were spread in the room, around small high tables, while lunging the walls and the bays were small corners made of lower tables with small leather-covered seats surrounding the tables. Almost six persons could have sat there.

The lights of the bar fostered the old-fashion feeling, being old wooden candelabras, that once housed petrol lamp. Now the flame had been long replaced by electricity, but they kept the protective glasses.

One of the questions she had to answer was her age. She did not look that old, thus she had to show her ID to the bartender, who was standing behind the big piece of furniture made of oak with golden painted bar surrounding it.

The second, she responded with her demand, some highly alcoholized Belkan beer. The bartender just asked her one more time, since this was one with more than ten degree, and he was not used to young student asking for such beverage.

"Soyez prudent avec votre bécane après (be wary with your bike then)." The bartender advised her, having deduced she was the owner of the ZBM parked nearby, since she had put her helmet on the counter while reaching for one of her biker jacket inner pocket to get the money.

She had chosen not to have any purse. Even if her bike had some compartment to put that kind of stuff, those compartment were already filled with scholar stuff, and above all, purses were just annoying to her, since people would always film them with useless stuff and then take ten minutes looking for their money.

"Ouaip, mais j'srais pas Sam ce soir. J'ai un échec à oublier (Yeah, but I won't be teetotaler tonight. I've a failure to forget)." She replied with a bit of disdain, having already drunk half her bock.

"Ah. Amour ou études (love or study) " He curiously asked, having a bit of time since the bar was almost empty at this hour. Most customers arrived around nine or later.

"Études. Une autre! (studies. Another!)" She ordered, and was served a few seconds later, expressing her desire to forget this stupid failure as she brought the empty bock with strength on the counter. Still, the glass was far too strong to even crack it.

That was the beginning of that fateful evening. She was anticipating some hangover, but certainly not what would follow. Besides, not only her little peaceful world would be shattered tonight, but the one of all Eruseans as well.

Still, for about one hour, she surely drank more than one liter, enough to feel a bit unphased. She was not fully drunk, nor near ethylic comatose, but it was enough to make her quit the high bar stool in which she feared for her balance. Now, she was eating some snack to help cope with the amount of alcohol she had ingurgitated, sat in one of those corners.

They had put the TV on some bidding channel, showing car or horses races, interrupted from times to times by hazard games and such. She never played such, having never been met with luck in her life. Sure, she had benefited from circumstances a few times in her life, but now that she had failed, and was met with the sad perspective of having to retry that concours of the Air Force.

But around 21:45, she remembered the time because she just heard some church ringing their bells once to mark the quarter, one bike race she was actually enjoying seeing was brutally interrupted as the victory lap was beginning. A few unhappy bidders swore as the race was replaced with an emergency broadcast, showing a shaky cam. In one corner, they were indicating where it had been taken from, some container-carrier in the middle of the sea part between the Usean and Osean continent, not that far from Erusea's Zone of Economic Interest. But where it had been taken from, or through which means did not matter, regarding to what it was now displaying: four small fireballs, and a dislocated ablaze A-320 set in a collision course with the ocean. With such kinetic energy, there was few hopes for survivors among its crew or passengers. The last thing they saw was another black dot high in the sky, which seemed to be fleeing from the area.

"Notre royaume est endeuillé aujourd'hui. L'avion de liaison de Philippe V le conquérant a explosé en pleine mer. (Our Kingdom has been plunged into mourning today. The liaison plane of Philippe V the conqueror exploded over the sea) " A broadcaster described the scene, that would impact the geopolitics of the continent for the decades to come.

"Bon débarras (good riddance)." Someone said at the counter. He was expressing joy when they should theoretically be mourning. But there was reason for this : Philippe V, named the warmonger king, had put Erusea and its neighbors in a state of constant war since the beginning of his so-called "oversight of neighbors" in 1985, as Shilage, Voslage and Belarus were encountering order issues, that the Erusean had created to take control of those lands while having a somewhat good role. Of course, most of the thugs they had hired to do their dirty deeds were either hidden for the more useful ones, and the other ones, the arrogant that try to step out of their leash and bite the hand that had fed them were executed.

"Enfin la paix (Peace at last)." Another added, before he added in a cheerful tone "J'offre la tournée. Pour la paix ! (I am offering the next round. For Peace)".

The first years, they had welcomed this gain in territory. They might have accepted the war if it had only last less time than it did. The first conquest of the cities was simple once their overseers had almost disarmed the local forces and replaced them. Furthermore, they were small dukedom and kingdom having recently turned into republics for Voslage and Shilage, Belarus had resisted since they had suffered a terrible winter that destroy most of their agriculture. The Amberan mountains, a region that had been at war and without real government but ruled by old families of warlord, had been way harder to conquer. Those narrow valleys did not let any opening for the Erusean ground forces. So, they bombed everything, and only let a few fortresses here and there, those were the ones that had signed treaty to keep a bit of power with Erusea ruling the other territories.

Then, Erusea tried to go against the much more potent opponent than the FCU and their allies were. They were met with fierce resistance, and also with Osean threats. Osea had accepted that they could annex a few minor countries they had no commercials ties with, but not the FCU. And Osea began to furnish a bit of ammo to some pro-Osean rebels amongst the occupied states, including the republican Erusean, which had caused numerous terror acts, which make the whole Osean operation a failure, since they hoped to cause a massive rebellion by winning the heart of the occupied peoples, then intervened, and put a more Osean-friendly regime in place which would allow them to exploit the resources of the Usean continent. Yet, a similar strategy would be applied to some southern Usean states that were not fully in the FCU.

"Le roi est mort, Vive le roi ! (the king is dead, long live the king)" Another celebrated the oncoming change of power. After all, the grandson of the king, which had refused to be any part of his grandfather's sick rhetoric's, was known to be like his father, a more pacifist kind of man. His father, the son of Philippe V had tried to rebel but was caught and later executed. Officially, the death penalty was not used any more in Erusea, or only for the case of treason amongst its armies. And with the Dauphin being one of Erusea's general, his father used this reason to reuse the old guillotines and cut the head of these rebs.

"Vive la république plutôt (Rather long live the republic !" One counter-argued, and for sometimes, people would argue about what would be the best.

"What Philippe VI "Le Sage" (the wise) decide to implement was maybe the best." Vasquez intervened in Iskanda's recalling.

"Yeah, I admit that creating a republic, but with the king as some high counsellor with some veto rights to some extent and some saying about external affairs and military was a good compromise for moderate monarchist and republicans alike. Besides, allowing the occupied countries to have a bit of autonomy is a good step toward their independence." Iskanda agreed that this modern king that had taken inspiration from the Emmerian and Nordennavikian almost constitutional monarchy was a good thing. However, not everybody was happy in that bar that night, especially herself back then. Politics will not change the fact that she had failed her entrance examination. Even if, to be honest, she did not utterly fail, she was just passed over by some guy that she did not like, for a few reasons.

First, he kind 'a bragged about his success a bit too much sooner that day, and it took all the countenance of Iskanda not to draw her blade out of her jacket and -maybe not use it- but at least threaten him very seriously. Second, she had quite great suspicion that he might have cheated, or used some hole in the loop to get better grades, because what he get wasn't what his grades he had all year long let suppose he would get. Of course, she had no proof that he did it. But she suspected him not to be white as snow. No one was, and she was not in any way, but she was sure he was not just a simple student. She was not either, her past was already filled with dread. What could be filling his?

She would discover it as she ranted about the fact that he said, "I've one more letter, and a rank higher." She thought she was only speaking mentally about that, but apparently, she was not, but she might have not noticed it due to the alcohol she had absorbed. Furthermore, no one had made her any notices about that, but the dramatic news was enough to keep people occupied, as more broadcast were displayed. They tried to see the attacker, but they only saw a blurred spot in the air, followed by the trails of his wing. The Erusean Air Force failed to track him down. No one had claimed the slaughter of most of the royal family and the high-ranking officers.

But another girl, a bit older than her, maybe in her late twenties sat in front of her. She wore black jeans and a sweatshirt of the same color with a hoodie that did not let her hairs visible. Only her ebony face could be seen, as she opened the conversation with the slightly inebriated Iskanda.

"I heard you talking about some Iskander. Is it that man?" She asked while handing her a picture. Picture that had been taken without the person knowing it, because he was deliberately looking outside of the cam.

Even if Iskanda was submitted to alcohol, she recognized the face immediately, and nodded right away.

"That man is not just a cheater. But the son of the leader of some of these thugs that Erusea used as a means to their ends." She mumbled to the drunk Iskanda, which seemed to be less drunk after hearing this news.

"I knew there was something odd about him. The sins of the father will be the son's curse." Iskanda rejoiced herself. It was not much, but maybe she could try to do some gamble with this intel.

However, gamble was not what this other girl had in mind. She wanted a more severe punishment, since he was not just the son of some criminal, he was a criminal himself. This man and his father's thugs had abducted several women, including her sister. Which was found defenestrated the following day, with defensive wounds, while the other were found dead after having been raped at the flat were her sister had jumped from. Or maybe she was pushed by her abductors. The local police could not do crap. And the Erusean overseers just executed a few of the henchmen, to bring some false order and a false justice while the true masterminds were now safe in some Erusean villa gifted by the state for their "services" during the conquest of Delarus.

"You want him to be removed of the list so you can take his place, right? How about we removed him… definitely?" She did not used three thousand ways to express her mind, and the sentence he deserved.

"That would end my worries." Iskanda did not explicitly say no to this proposition. As such, it was almost agreeing with the idea of murdering this man.

"But she wanted to be sure of my will. So, she asked for me to do a blood pact." She explained to Vasquez, while showing a small scar on the back of her left wrist. She still remembered drawing her blade and making her own blood flow on some sheet of paper.

Obviously, it wasn't that big of a deal, it was less blood than when the time she had given her own for medical purposes, but it was a bit more painful, as her shaking hands didn't use her harpoon that well at this moment.

"I guess this list removal went as well as my rescue." Vasquez gauged on ground of the width of the wide smile on Iskanda's face.

"The results were quite similar to me. And the aftermath was almost the same for my obstacles." Iskanda kindly replied, even if her actions had been nothing but kind that day. She did not consider these men she slayed that day to be worthy enemies nor adversaries. Just obstacles that needed to be removed with unrestricted violence.

 **Outskirt of Farbanti, Erusea, 07/07/1991, 22:30, Weather: low cumulonimbus, heavy risk of thunder.**

This woman that had refused to disclose her name had helped her some gear better meant for assassination than her standard clothes. Even if it was only some black poncho with a hoodie, she would wear above her leather body suit made for biking, as well as some scarf to hide the lower half of her face.

They had now arrived at the location of what the other woman would describe at their targets, and Iskanda as her obstacles. Such men, that had committed such atrocities did not deserve to be called men. Maybe future dead men were usable, but that was only a description of their crude fate.

As they were standing near the great mansion, hidden being some high if trees and high fences. At least no neighbor would hear or see them. They fought they were safe, but they were just entrenched in their own trap. What they could see from the street was a big two-stories house of white stone.

Iskanda rang the electronic bell, and a voice answered:

"State your business." It said. It was not the voice of that Iskander, and the other girl had not recognized the voice of his father either. It must be the voice of some guard they hired, or some other thugs that followed their leaders here.

"I have some intel about an assassination attempt against your master." Iskanda replied, and from what the guard could see from a cam placed near the entrance, she was indeed accompanied by a girl with her wrist bound by some cuffs.

"Interesting. You can enter. If that's true, there'll be something for you." The guard was almost relieved to hear that one such attempt had been avoided. But he could not see much of this girl that was speaking with a pretty loud voice. He would have expected a more high-pitched voice, but maybe this one had a distorted voice due to smoking or other health issues. He activated a switch, and a small door was opened in the massive metallic fence, which if wide open might have let pass a tank or a large truck. The two women stepped in, thus disappearing of the field of view of the first cam and being outside of the field of view of the second, that right now showed only the white marbles stair that led to the house.

He was followed by the other guard, and the son of the house. He wanted to see if this would-be killer was related to their past, or maybe sent by some victims they caused in their past. But to be honest, his father and him had caused quite a huge amount of victims and dread during the conquest of the "VSD" - the name of the alliance they tried to create to resist Erusea, Voslage Shilage Delarus, but which didn't last that long-.

So, the three men stepped down the nice marble stairs, ending in the alley that linked to the entrance, and that was not covered by the field of view of the cams. None of them recognized any of the two women that were in front of them.

The masked one pushed the cuffed one, saying rudely:

"She was barging about wanting to kill you half-drunk in some bar." Which was not far from the truth, in all honesty. Even if it was the other way around, but who cares. She was not trying to get an alibi, just convince a few fools.

"Interesting. Why didn't you kill her there?" The young boy asked, with Iskanda having recognized him, even if the night was quite dark, but there were a few lights near the house and in the nearby street that allowed them to see quite well. And even if she had not seen him, his despicable voice would have been enough for her to recognize him.

"Too many witnesses there. While here I don't think you'll have any." She justified her action, keeping her fake almost-masculine voice.

"You did well. Let us handle that matter, I need to look at this killer, alone." He said, while protruding a flashlight he used to illuminate the idle face of the unnamed lady.

"So, I can go, or I need to stay?" She let them a false choice. She knew they would find all of this suspicious, and not let her go, especially if they try to suppress this threat. And she doubted greatly that they would call the police. There was no justice, only revenge, and they would only enact their own justice through revenge tonight.

"Stay here. We might need to question you too." Iskander ordered, before whispering to one of the guards, or thugs, but the acute ears of Iskanda still caught the end of the line:" wary of this one."

The guards tell her to wait by the door, with the two of them watching every single of her movement closely. They were more wary of her than the Donner squad she would meet 4 years letter, even if the latter had better reasons not to trust her. Still, they did not make any notice when she protruded a cigarette holder, and carefully put the cigarette into place.

She then asked for fire, pretending she had forgotten her lighter somewhere, and one of them tossed her a lighter. But the flame of the lighter was only to mask what she would really do with this cigarette holder. That was not a true cigarette holder, but a well camouflaged blowgun. And as they thought she was simply exhaling the fume, she breathed hard in the blowgun, causing the small dart inside of it to fly toward the throat of one of the guards.

Due to the dark night, and with the only light having been the flame of the lighter, they did not notice it at first. And the dart was so small that the guard believed it was an insect, because he had the same gesture than if he had been stung by some flies or mosquitoes. However, it had the same effect than the tsetse fly, but at a lightning fast speed, since the sleeping agent was quite concentrated in the small dart. Furthermore, when he had tried to make what he thought to be an insect go away, he only stuck the dart deeper in his skin, quickening its effects. So, a few seconds later, he collapsed. His colleague caught him before he hit the ground, but the next second, his concerns about this unknown masked lady revealed to be true.

Because his face was met by the flame of the lighter Iskanda had put out of whack, especially the quantity of essence that was supposed to be injected for one flame. Which caused him to wail in pain, before the closed fist of Iskanda sent him to the ground with his other friend. Of course, all of this noise had been heard by the son of the house, that was still looking at the unknown girl, and had not recognized her yet. Quickly, he pulled a knife from a pocket hanging at his belt.

"Stand down, girl!" He threatened Iskanda, facing the woman that had drawn her jade blade that was glowing a bit in the dark, but by doing so he turned his back to the supposed would-be killer. That quickly became a soon-to-be killer when she used the metallic link of her cuff to choke the boy from behind. He tried to get free of her grasp, but while he was distracted, the other girl had moved closer.

She kicked the weak arm that tried to block her strike out of her way, and struck with her blade right below the sternum, ensuring that this man who was already choked would never be able to catch his breath back. Then, as she pulled the blade and he fell under the pain, still choked by the other lady, the said lady whispered into his ears the last words he would hear of his life :"My sister is avenged. You got Lisa, but not me."

Then both women proceed to enter in the house, dragging the now dead body in order to lure a bit the father that might be a bit suspicious inside. Still, with no guard watching the cams now, they managed to drag the lifeless body up to the marble stairs, that were now covered with a bit of crimson, but nothing could be seen in this now darken place.

They made the body enter the house, with Iskanda holding it straight up after having stuck her blade in his nape, holding the dead body from behind it, to avoid raising suspicion. She called for the father, imitating the masculine voice she had heard quite a few times in class, and just a short while ago. Still, they could feel a bit of wariness in the voice of the father, as he asked if everything went well outside.

"Yes, it went perfectly. Just one obstacle that needed to be removed." Iskanda falsely exalted, but by doing so, she lost her focus a bit, and her voice was not as loud as before.

"Have you caught some cold? Your voice seemed a bit strange this evening." He said as he descended at the level they were with his lifeless son, having turn from the wooden staircase to look at his son he thought to be in good health, as he was unaware of the event that had transpired outside.

"Oh, there's no risk for me to either catch a cold." She added, continuing to use a loud voice. This response caught the father a bit off guard, and he was caught off guard even more as he saw his idle son standing beside two woman he did not recognize immediately. But he got a very fast reminding as one of her shoved his son toward him, while claiming:

"You can't catch a cold when you're dead."

At these words, the father stood there for some time before stumbling backward in the staircase, in utter shock. He tried to get back to his feet and run upstairs, but as he tried to push himself with his leg, he felt a sharp object going through his back. The next second, he was unable to move, the attacker having hit his spine, or some motor nerve.

"Now you'll die, bastard! Maybe now you'll remember!" The other girl had let Iskanda pulled the blade out of the wound, that had created a massive hemorrhage that was spreading blood everywhere on the wooden staircase, with the face of the man now distorted by pain.

"Mayana… We should have taken both of you…" He muttered with his last strength, as the coldness of death was gaining ground inside his body.

"You should've indeed." The one he did not know asserted, before laughing like a mad woman. Then she twirled her blade in her hand a bit, before suddenly lunging forward and plunging it into his throat. From the badly executed tracheotomy, he would die even quicker, as she had cut his jugular in the process, and now he was choked on his own blood pouring in his lungs. One minute later, and he would be as cold as the marble stairs.

"Now, we burned that house to the ground." Mayana suggested, seeing nothing of interest here. Her enemies were dead, and the obstacles for her new acquaintances' path had been removed with extreme violence.

"I have some idea about that, but we'll have to act quick once the whole thing is settled." Iskanda chuckled, as she went for the kitchen, and open all the gas valves, before getting some aluminum sheet from a nearby shelves and putting the whole roll inside the microwave oven. Then she switched it on at maximum power, before rushing outside of the room, in a hurry.

"I guess all will blow up soon." Mayana hoped to see all of this reduced to cinder. That should reduce the chance of them getting caught. Besides, if firefighters were to intervene, they would just find two burn bodies that the explosion would shatter beyond recognition.

"Yep. The magnetron of the microwave will soon blow, and that should be enough to ignite all of that gas." She replied fast, as they were now running in the alley toward the great fence. She had only taken the wallet of the son, looking for her ID, that she might need to usurp his place. Or to take what she only thought to be rightfully hers.

A few seconds later, a strange electronic noise, like some heavy buzzing occurred, followed by a violent explosion. Remains of an infamous past has been destroyed, setting a better future for both women. One would have the satisfaction of having gotten her revenge, while the other would have the opportunity to achieve her dream. Even if it would be on the false name of a now dead thugs.

 **Some room of the Bienenstock Air Base, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 15:20, Weather: medium cloud coverage**

"So, killing and burning people seems to almost be some kind of habit for you" Vasquez stated, a bit shocked that such a young person had committed such acts. Sure, that kind of man did not deserve any pity, but dying in such conditions was quite horrible. Now, she understood where she had sought for the horror that she showed in her fight again the Hexens, from what this Erusean mercenary had recalled her. It was not a story she would like to hear again, anyway.

"That's right. Even if I evolved from using methane and lighters to static FAEBs." Iskanda agreed that her past was filled with a pretty big amount of blood, cinders, and dread. Blood that she had made flow and was surely enough to fill a nice swimming pool for vampire. Not as much cinder as the Oseans would create when they would finally destroy Hoffnung. And this dread that she had made her enemies share, for her pure bliss.

"But the army didn't notice anything when you presented herself as that Iskander?" Vasquez was a bit curious how a woman managed to appear as a man, especially in these years of late adolescence.

"Nope. They just pointed out that I had cut my hair a bit more than the necessary, and that I lost some weight and take some centimeters. I explained that by some late growth spurt." Iskanda explained, she still remembered how uncomfortable she had felt the first days, extremely wary at the idea of having her true identity disclosed.

"Besides, that Mayana girl had some friends that were good at faking IDs, and since there was a bit of administrative marasmus after the death of the warmonger king, it was quite easy to change everything, and kept my record clean." Iskanda insisted that she had indeed acted at the right time. Sometimes, life was giving rare opportunities, and she was happy to have taken it.

She was also met with an interesting opportunity today. She had also acted at the right time here and now, now pretty sure that if she hadn't been here the defenses of Hoffnung wouldn't have stood and instead of only a mere thousand death, the civilian losses could have equaled the death toll of the EMP disaster. She had thought of some plan to get those high-altitude attackers, but she would have to reveal her identity. And to be honest, she did not know how it could go. Sure, she was of great help this morning, but would they trust one of their arch-nemesis?

"What will you do next?" Vasquez asked, with a more inquisitive gaze than before, and a more posed voice. She had understood that she would not just stand down and watch the world burn. She was more of those people that would set the world ablaze, anyway.

"I'll fight. Take that chance to fight, and the next. On and on, until I obtain utter Victory, or the chances are spent." She answered with the most utter determination. Her determination was not a rock nor steel, but more like titanium, that could be bend in its initial form if deformed.

"Then good luck revealing your identity." Vasquez wished her, with honesty and a bit of gentleness in her voice. She would not become a friend of that woman any time soon, but she could not help but foster her to fight for all who cannot. After all, right now and here, she was amongst these persons, bedridden due to the effects of the poison that had greatly tired his body and mind.

"Thanks. Victory is at hands, I can feel it." Iskanda stopped leaning over the bed, getting straight up again, and tightening her fist like she was ready to strike at any Osean or North Belkans with her bare hands if needed.

She left the room with her idea of a half-plan. Half-plan that involved far too many contingencies to actually work in any ordinary circumstances. But current circumstances were much closer to extraordinary ones. However, she had been pretty lucky, the presence of the equipment she needed to fight the Hexen was a good proof of that. Or was someone fostering the convenience of its presence there in a god-forsaken place? Both could be right, and for once she would not refuse any help from anyone. Especially with the line between enemies and adversaries thinning more and more...

 **Blumenberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 15:30, Weather, high altitude stratus.**

The Schwarze squad was currently deployed over the old Belkan city of Blumenberg, that had gotten this name from the blue granite rocky outcrop on which the medieval castle that was hanging over the city, which had surrounded the old fortress. The city itself, which was cut in half by the Tau river, had its own fortress once, but the walls were removed at the end of the last century to build a big boulevard all around the city, and only a few towers remained for historical interest.

Instead, the true defense was a bit at the East of the city, where a massive fortress was located, built in the same style than the Bayes fortress in Fato. Even if such huge concrete geometrical fortress wouldn't resist to high penetration bombs Osean B-2s could carry, the fortress whose shape was one of a ten-pointed star housed an impressive array of short range and long range defensive armament, from SAMs and Triple As to flak guns and BAWS, but without any energy-based weaponry. Six BAWS were set at the center of the structure, flanked by rows of SAMs and SPK with very high rate of fire, while each point had at least six turrets of various caliber supported by SAMs, all able to inflict massive punishment to any allied aircraft.

This is why only two of them were above the fortress, helping in long-range support with their XLAAs, while six of them were currently deployed at the North-West of the city, which was the direction of Anfang, one of the last major North Belkan stronghold, with the other being Dinsmark, the Belkan capital. Right now, Gault was deployed on the way from Hoffnung to Blumenberg. There, the fights were a bit less intense, with the North Belkan trying to sneak through their defenses, either through stealth or through small ground units armed with shoulder-mounted SAMs, but these were spotted by the Merlin's and turned into piles of minced meat by the sub-munitions bombs carried on their Su-47, and their planes turned into flying fireballs by ERAAMs from the ADFX-01s.

But to be honest, defensive fight was not something they were used to. He never did, to be honest. From the Romneyan conflict to this new war, he was only the attacker, or the hunter. Now they needed to be the shield for a nascent nation that was being assaulted from all sides

"Netz squadron, Schwarze squadron, J-35Js Draken approaching at low altitude." One of the operators from the Fortress who had live intel from the satellites of the Pendragon Projekt calmly announced. Himself had not too much worry about, if the two squads showed the same effectiveness here than above B7R.

Volleys of XLAAs and SAAMs from the eight planes welcome the numerous North Belkan craft. They tried to retaliate, but their SAAMs ended up being shot for trash, as they had to pull evasives due to the defensive fire, or sometimes to avoid debris from their comrades getting shot down. Only one SAAM really threatened Schwarze 3, but he got rid of it by flying vertically as the missile was approaching, knowing that sudden changes of altitude were hard to follow for the targeting pod of the attacker.

Still, there was eight J-35J that managed to slip through their fire and get into missile range. They think they would have some mobility edge over the fast interceptors, and maybe some false numeric advantage over the two Flankers that could outmaneuver them easily. But the Schwarze team knew very well how to take advantage of their raw speed.

"Fünf und Sechs, bleib dort. Anderen, AB auf (5 and 7, stay there, the others, AB on)!" Zubov ordered, as he put his afterburners to their peaks, going supersonic with a simple push of the hand.

"Ver. Diesen Verrätern wird Tod treffen." Helger Collins, aka Schwarze five asserted, as he was locking his XLAAs. Now, both sides were considering the others to be traitors to Belka, but none of the members of Schwarze was feeling guilty. They had not felt any guilt when they had taken those younglings a few months prior. And they would never. They had enough guilt for their past actions.

The four black and red Foxhounds by-passed the Draken so quickly that the missiles they fired struck the double-delta wing fighters after they crossed their path. And even if they had not much time to lock them, these missiles had been fired at very high speed, and thus they were faster than the standard missiles when they hit the Draken. The few that survived this second onslaught were slaughtered by more long-range fire, that this time they had trouble dealing with, having to avoid the close-range fire of the MiG-31s.

"Schöne Manöver (Nice maneuver)." Netz 2 observed from far away. Sure, it was nothing as fancy as that Schwarze Luchs pilot had pulled out above B7R, but it was an efficient strategy.

"Your fire support was quite precise." Sergei Karkov, Schwarze number 2 commented, as none of the Draken were able to break away from their second volley of SAAMs. His tone, and the overall Schwarze teams was a bit nicer than when they killed these fugitives in MiG-21s or when their number 3, Harald Brehme, finished a runner from the Grabacr squad. After all, they were not supposed to destroy anything but their enemies here, and not just everything in the vicinity. For these reasons they had taken only air-to-air weaponry, and their standard would be enough to fight off light ground targets. Besides, the Fortress was equipped with some long-range howitzer that would turn any North Belkan ground forces into piles of metallic wreckage.

Coming back around, the defenders of Blumenberg readied themselves for the next attack. This one was showing a bit more of dangerousness, or just more will from the Belkan commanders to destroy the CSB. There were rumors of off the books talks between Osean and North Belkans to join forces if both had to engage CSB forces. Yet, what would come of such unholy alliance? Nothing good for the principality nor the allied forces. But the CSB was acting quite a lot too. Some of the small allied countries had seen their interest in keeping the wheels of war running decreasing, as well as the fighting will of their people, that had expected a swift victory after the liberation now more than a month ago.

This more serious attack was comprised of 12 Su-32s who harbored the trademark three-tone turquoise blue camo, six Tornadoes Gr4s with a two-tone brown camo and black radome, and eight Fulcrums in a three-tone grey geometric camo made of hard line rather than the usual camo pattern. This was quite a potent strike force, with the Su-32s filled to the brim with LAGMs and XAGMs, the MiG-29s acting as air cover and the Gr4s jamming the radar. It was not enough to jam the sensors of the Merlin Satellites that were still busy intercepting ASAT missiles fired from the North Belkan fleet, but it would be enough to hinder their lock-on at such range.

Still, it was enough to nullify the fire of the XLAAs from Schwarze. Not to hinder the SAAMs of Netz, since jammers are not made to counter laser tracking pods, thus letting them score a few kills on the MiG-29s. They were the primary targets, as they would be the most annoying ones once they would be in the jamming field of the Gr4s. Furthermore, they were at the front of the enemy formation, which had Su-32s on its flanks and core, and Gr4s as their rear guard

Thus, the pilots of Schwarze rushed forward, hoping to occupy the North Belkan long enough so the two Su-27s could pick them up from long range. At their peak speed they had quickly reached, they would outrun their missiles, creating a risk with they hit their own fire, so they went gun blazing only on their targets, splitting up in three groups of two that attacked respectively the Su-32 on the left and right flanks, and Schwarze 1 and 2 against the MiG-29s, which were only 5 by now.

"Verdammt. The Fallen Vulture." A Belkan Su-32 copilot swore as he recognized the crafts attacking them. And the next thirty seconds made him doubt greatly about the quality of their escort.

Because these thirty seconds show the fall of most of it, and of a certain number of craft they were actually supposed to protect. Right after Zubov promised their fall:

"I'm maybe a fallen but it's YOU who'll fail and fall." Was his harsh answer as he gunned down a Fulcrum head-on. He was so fast that his target exploded in his sixes, along with the craft downed by Karkov.

As the two MiG-31s kept their forward motion, they downed two Su-32s head-on, and only by that time the three last MiG-29s had settled on the pursuit of the far faster aircrafts. And even if theoretically the Fulcrum could outturn a Foxhound, the North Belkan pilots had some doubt in their own abilities as they break the escort formation, to go on the hunt for the usual hunters. Their SAAMs were avoided with ease by Schwarze 1 and 2 as they zoomed out of the formation, which forced the MiG-29s to pitch high and climb hard to follow them, but there the less powerful engines of the MiG-29s yet with vector thrust that could have given them some mobility edge in pure dogfight weren't giving them any edge on the MiG-31s.

On the flanks, the Belkan situation was far worse. There, some of the Su-32s had taken some XMAAs in the hope of fending off the CSB defenders. However, either they had studied how Iskanda had battled with the ADFX-01s with her downward curved flight pattern, or they just figured that this tactic was efficient against such missile that lack high mobility, because they were using it profusely. Thus, most of the weak defensive fire of the Strike Flankers was for nothing, flying above the unusually agile MiG-31s.

"Let's make hell rain on those Ralder." Schwarze 2 suggested to his leader, as they had now arrived right above a certain number of Strike Flankers.

"Gute Idee." He acknowledged, and with a swift motion on the yaw axis, fell from his climb in a perfectly mastered spin. Which he only made last a bit in order to fall faster on those Su-32s.

Even if they had no good lock on them, they fired their XLAAs vertically at them while keeping their motion on the yaw axis, almost crossing each-other's path in doing so. They only scored two hits, but these two hits were two kills as the long-range missile exploded on the dual cockpits of the Strike Flankers. Furthermore, their attacks were not about killing, but maximizing the fear and dread amongst their foes.

Which were already quite high, and for good reasons : as the number one and two of Schwarze were keeping the MiG-29s glued on their tails but far enough to render them pretty much useless, the four other Foxhounds had slaughtered the first line of Strike Flankers, and were now pressing on the second lines, which had scattered following the fire of their leader. The SAAMs of Netz 1 and 2 kept scoring a few kills, though they were running low on their supply of long-range missile. They had thought they would have ERAAMs on their craft if they joined the CSB, but the process of making an aircraft not intended to carry these compatibles with them was a bit long. If the attack on Hoffnung had been tomorrow or the next day, they might have been equipped with it, and they would have already - MiG-31s and Su-27s alike - laid waste on those North Belkans.

After their vertical fire on these Su-32s, the two MiG-31s climbed back again, only to be followed again by the Fulcrums. However, they had a different scheme in mind this time. This time, they really push their engines to their already augmented limits, ensuring them to have enough distance between them and their pursuers. Then they enacted perfectly coordinated vertical Himmelmans, which surprised a bit their pursuers, not thinking that they would be this reckless, as both were on the verge of entering uncontrolled spins as they enacted these maneuvers.

"Open fire" The Belkan leading the three-plane formation bellowed, but it was too late. Missiles had already left the pylons of Schwarze one and two and went straight for the Fulcrums. If they were flying horizontally these hits would not have been this deadly, but here they were enough to make them enter uncontrolled spins of death.

"Fulcrums neutralized." Schwarze 2 announced with a cold tone, as he was seeing the planes in a ramming motion toward the ground due to their loss of control. Maybe the pilots had lost consciousness due to the G-forces, he hoped. This way they would have less feeling when their craft would hit the ground and blow up.

"Only a few Strike Flankers and the jammers still flying." Schwarze 4 indicated, as he was chasing one of them. The Gr4 tried to expand his wings to gain in mobility at low speed were the MiG-31 was not excelling, but by doing so he got too slow to evade a pair of missiles and went down.

"Netz one, another Su-32 down." He almost congratulated himself, as he managed to shoot down a Flanker after being tangled for a few seconds in a scissoring maneuver, but the greatest inertia of the Striker allowed him to come on top of this engagement.

"Netz two, two more down." His wingman shared other good news. Two of the Belkan Su-32s were trying to outsmart him, with one doing the bait, and the other pursuing the CSB pilot. Still the higher mobility of the Su-27 made his time as evading the fire of the Strike Flanker easy, especially its gun who was oriented toward the ground and thus harder to aim at enemy aircrafts, while the bait was getting bitten slowly bits by bits by his gun. In a desperate attempt to reverse the situation the bait tried to pull out a Cobra.

However, as he tried to run out of this precarious situation, he ran straight into trouble, as the Su-27 of Netz 2 had done a micro dive in anticipation of the Cobra and fired at his engine nozzles. Thus, their plane become way more unstable than he should have and enable to steer their craft in the right direction they ended up crashing on the pursuer.

"Two bird with one stone. And what's more, with their own stone." Schwarze 3 laughed at the irony of the situation. Trying to evade and killing your wingmen in doing so. Maybe it was better that out of the four Belkan pilots and copilots, nobody survived. If even one of them did the guilt would have been quite hard to bear.

"Mach sie fertig (finish them)." Schwarze ordered, as he had finally leveled after this chase with the Fulcrums a bit too long for his taste. But right now, the Strike Flankers were down to a number that could have been counted on a severely amputated hand, and there was only two Gr4s.

 **Blumenberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 15:45, Weather, high altitude stratus.**

However, these Gr4s had not only the task of trying to cover the retreating craft, which was only suicidal given who they were against. Even if they were not their allied anymore, the Schwarze squad would keep honoring their MO of shooting down every retreating aircraft.

Their other mission that was now turning the previous attack in nothing but a big distraction, was to provide cover for the next wave of fighters. Other wave that was not equipped to attack the city itself, only its defenders. This other wave was of twelve Su-37s with a grey chainmail like camo, and black wingtips and rudder tips, the Reicherer squadron. They were a squadron whose commander was pretty close from the men of the Kaiserritter squadron that this Schwarze Luchs had almost defeated on her own, before having its survivors annihilated by these Netz traitors.

But right now, as the Netz and Schwarze squad were gunning the two last jammers, they fired. As such, their XLAAs became only visible as the two ECM pod were destroyed when the planes fell in flames to the ground.

"Verlassen die Formation (break the formation)!" Zubov shouted, as he zoomed out as fast as his engine could allow. The XLAAs targeting him grazed his engines outlets, but they had not enough g-tolerance to turn this sharply from their horizontal trajectory, and thus were shot for trash.

Still, not all men in his squadron were this lucky: the number four and six were a bit late to react, and thus were forced to eject. The two members of the Netz squad met the same fate, with their Su-27 climbing not fast enough either to escape the second volley of XLAAs. And as the four survivors had to evade while still climbing, this gave the opportunity for some planes of the Reicherer Schaft to climb below them. And soon, they might get at QAAMs range. Which some members of Schwarze were now doubting in their chances to evade these highly mobile missiles with redundant lock.

"Ich werde etwas versuchen (I'll try something)." Schwarze 3 announced, being one of the more doubtful in their chances at surviving orthodox dogfight with these guys. Furthermore, if he had evaded all XLAAs fired at him, he had taken some bullets sooner while downing a Strike Flanker from below. He had had to pitch quite low to get this shot, but with their gun intended for CAS, this was not that hard. Thus, Schwarze 3 could not set his afterburners at their peaks and would be caught up sooner than the others. And if the others had the chance to bail out safely, he was doubting that such Rald Partei supporters would let them survive if they had the possibility to shoot them down on their chutes.

"Was?" Schwarze 2 inquired, as he was evading a few XLAAs by doing an aileron roll vertically, maneuver a bit hard to realize with a plane not built for acrobatics.

"Du wirst sehen (you'll see)." He replied quickly and cut his engine for a short amount of time. Of course, these few seconds were enough to let gravity win other thrust, but he was trusting his aircraft enough to try this maneuver. And as the North Belkan respected the laws of dynamics - the south Belkan did too, but while removing the acceleration factor here -, they flew over him, not reacting quick enough to fire their QAAMs, which if they possessed these uncanny tracking capacity, required slightly more time than regular missiles to be lock in the first place.

"Did we hit that one?" One pilot of the Reicherer squad that saw him fell like a rock shared his hope of having gotten this first kill on the Schwarze from close range.

"Nein. Aber du wirst bald (No. But you'll be hit soon)." Schwarze 3 harshly replied, as he was again switching his damaged engine back on and firing his last four XLAAs and two missiles in the process. All needed a bit more time to reach their intended target since they had to overcome gravity too, but most of them reach their target, or at least created enough chaos to force the other Su-37s to cut the chase.

Which the other three Schwarze member did not lose any moment to capitalize on this opening, falling on the scattered Terminators like birds of prey. Thus, the Reicherer squad had a hard time as they leveled, but in the end, only three planes were down and two other damaged but still combat-capable.

Thus, they engaged each other in fierce dogfights, with the 4 MiG-31s having to rely heavily on their sheer thrust to get out of the lock of the far more agile Su-37s. For them, they could just use their mobility which was not limited to the supersonic range like the Foxhounds. And obviously, their Cobra were executed almost perfectly, unlike the one that Su-32 tried to pull out only to be gunned down in the process. Here, the terminators were having the edge, and bit by bit they got one hit here and there on their preys.

Sure, the Schwarze squad was not going to let them turn their planes into wreckages for the Vultures to feed on. That would have been a bit too much ironic. Yet, the only kill they obtained was a hard one to get, as Schwarze 1 killed Reicherer 7 at the limit of stalling.

Their number seven had let Zubov chased him, only to force him through a streak of sharp turns hard to pull out with an interceptor without vector thrust. But the way he was doing this, it was almost telegraphing "I wanna do a Cobra" to Schwarze 1. He had not the mobility of a F-15C to counter such maneuvers the same way he saw the Solo wing do. He slowed down a lot, with his aircraft vibrating heavily as he went far beyond subsonic. Still, he managed to set his gun on the Terminator. And as he fired on his engine nozzles, he was not able to recover from the precarious post-stall maneuver.

However, this let Zubov open on his flank, and as he rolled a bit his aircraft to turn toward this new enemy, he entered in a spin. The speed given by the spin allowed him to outrun his opponent for a few seconds, but Reicherer 1 was relentless. If they were still allied, he could have made some positive comment other such trait in his way of flying. But here, he was only this relentless because he was the blind and deaf puppet of some mad dictators filled with delusion.

This situation was a bit the same for all the Schwarze survivors, who were outnumbered, but by capable pilots, and not by Osean, the latter being almost weaker when in number, as they tend to grow overconfident in such battle settings. They would need something to change to the battle to ensure their survival, and fast. Or the blue granite of Blumenberg would be paint in red from the blood of the civilians these Rald-Regiment weren't afraid to shed all over the place, especially if said civilians were people of Hoffnung seeking refuge, and even more if the refugees were workers that had helped in the construction of the technological marvels of the Pendragon Projekt.

The first change could have been a distraction for both squadron: a squad of A-12 Avengers appeared coming from the North-West. That must mean that Anfang had either had its air defense fully neutralized, or that they let these Oseans flew through North Belkan airspace. And obviously, the latter was the lore likely, even if it meant that the off the books talks between the two enemies had come to fruition. That was almost saddening the CSB pilots to see that North Belkan were ready to give up their honor to destroy them. But from another point of view, it was making them appear stronger, since they were strong enough to force the allied and Belka to join their forces in their tries to destroy the nascent new Belkan state.

"Blue Monarch here. Strikers, go for the fortress. The others, concentrate all your fire on the Vulture." Their leader expressed his eagerness to take these deserters-hunters down. Not that he knew any of the Belkan that had tried to defect and would have been killed by the thirteenth night chase squadron, but he had some friends amongst the "Shadow group" that had sometimes been sent to cover those deserters, and had had even less mercy from the Schwarze squad.

Of course, they had seen them only recently on their long-range radar, as the flying wing possessed some reduced radar cross section compared to the usual main fighters of Osea, being the F-16Cs, Tomcats, Eagles and Hornets. They were obviously a bit stealthier than that Rafale Discret Erusea had disclosed in the airshow of July 1994, and even more than the F-117As. Even if to be honest, it was not their stealth that had allowed them to get in the AO undetected, but the fact that both squadrons had their hands full right now.

But this was not the last change to the battle settings there would be this afternoon. The last that was meaningful for the CSB craft came as the A-12 in hunter configuration were only five hundred meters from getting into XLAA range. A volley of long-range missile coming from the south-east, the direction of Tauberg flew below the two squadron still entangled in their dogfights, only to find their targets immediately on the opposite vector. Ten A-12 exploded from the powerful missiles.

"These were ERAAMs!" Schwarze 5 rejoiced of seeing their help finally arriving. And as the craft pursuing him was a bit baffled by the sudden change in the balance of power, he was able to get in his six and play some Schräge Musik on his afterburners after recovering quickly from a controlled spin that cause the distracted Reicherer pilot to overflew him.

"Schwarze Falke 3 und 4, weiter feuern. Meine Erben werden diese Dogfight beenden (Black Falcon 3 and 4, keep firing. My heirs will end this dogfight)." The commanding tone of Kupchenko set his assets to their destined place, and more A-12s were sentenced to death as the two DW-2s were firing another volley of their ERAAMs. The ADFX-01 fired theirs too but could not after they entered into the denied battlespace.

"Already two third of my squad is down. Try to do something, Belkans, you should be in range to attack these flying wings!" The Osean leader was now not the happiest person given the poor results of their unholy alliance and shouted all his anger at his allied of circumstance.

"I'm a bit busy with their reinforcement too, Osean Dummkopf" Reicherer 1 replied with the same hate he used against these CSB traitors. After all, only more hate could come of an alliance based solely on their share hatred of the CSB.

But the Osean commander was unable to reply, as the third volley of ERAAMs was released, and terminated his squadron, who had not had a single kill on these Belkans.

On their way to the battlespace, the two Erben saw something they should not be expecting from their allies: Schwarze 3 retreating toward them, which was supposedly a death sentence in their MO. But to be more exact, he was only directing two Su-37s toward them.

"I'll try that fancy thing the Galm team like to do." Cipher said to his wingwoman, as he heavily tilted his plane, and aimed for the twin rudders of the Foxhound.

"Do as you want, Erbe 2. It's always good to learn from your adversaries." Zveda replied, as she turned toward some other Su-37 tailing Schwarze 5. They were not as fast as Foxhounds, but she knew she would catch up with them before they realized it.

"Drei, nicht bewegen (three, don't move)." He ordered, as he kept flying tilted toward the red and black plane. Which had maybe understood his plan, as he flew a bit lower, to ease the trajectory of the ADFX-01 whose wings were wider than the X-29As of the second Galm 1.

"What is this Morgan doing?" One of the Su-37 pilot's asked, having not heard of this fancy maneuver since they had always been stationed at Dinsmark since the beginning of the war, and had put little interest on stories about crazy foreign mercenaries. Thus, they did not anticipated the two pair of XMAAs that went quickly for their air intakes - the Erben had exchanged their MPBMs for the ERAAMs and XMAAs, as well as something else they still had to show to these foes-.

Something that Zveda showed not on her first kills either, as she only had to fire a pair of XMAAs at medium range to damage their craft as they were turning and twisting to keep Schwarze 5 in their crosshairs, but as he was in almost continuous controlled spin, it was quite hard even for them to keep up. Thus, finishing their damaged craft that had bled their speed in doing so and had just recovered from the small stall they were submitted after suffering minor damage from her XMAAs was ludicrously easy.

And now there was only five Su-37s remaining, that were now outnumbered, and that knew very well that running was useless, due to the extensive range of the ERAAMs carried by the realization of the Pendragon Projekt. This number went down to four after Zveda separated one of the two Su-37s that had desperately tried to shoot Zubov down from the beginning of the engagement, and that had failed in doing so, apparently.

She only had to get the enemy plane in her crosshair, and all was over in a microsecond. To be scientifically correct, in a bunch of femtoseconds would be the correct description of the time it took for her Femtolaser to take down the Su-37 as she was turning hard to evade a standard missile from the Erbe that had been purposely fired to make her turn that way. If these ADFX-01 had still their gun the Belkan opponent might have gotten a chance to survive -to survive after a hefty punishment, but to survive nevertheless-. But here the TFLS never let any chances. The amount of energy received on the area covering the engines of the Terminator was too much for both the metallic plating and the engines themselves, with the first being sublimated partially and the others exploding in less time that it takes to write it down.

Their first use of these downsized TFLS was definitely a resounding success. They had had similar results as they had to engage Belkan F-5Es and Typhoons a bit sooner in the afternoon. Their fire was an almost guaranteed kill, even for planes as big as E6-B prowlers, which they shot down as they tried to cover some low-flying A-10As that did not last long either. Their only disadvantage was that they could not fire burst of laser, but one unique shot, and that there was a fifteen second recharge. But the firepower was more than enough to parry this time loss.

"No!" Reicherer 1 screamed in desperation, as he saw the plane exploding in a matter of Femtoseconds. It was the plane of his niece, that he had made join his squadron a bit faster than through the usual process thanks to his political links. So, he had only the more reasons to be angry for this loss at the hands of nobodies that this traitor of Kupchenko had entrusted sixth gen prototypes.

"Let them run to hell." Schwarze suggested, as he was finally able to make his pursuer overcome by grief overcame him and fired some bullets in his ailerons. They were defeated. Now he was understanding the pleasure of some species that let they prey still alive to pursue them another time and make them suffer even more.

"It the place you deserved to be!" Reicherer replied with hostility, fed with revenge he couldn't get at this very moment. Heartbroken, he and the third members flew with dishonor amongst his squadron. Squadron that was reduced to him alone when Zubov fired his last three XLAAs on the fleeing crafts.

"Them I'll turn Dinsmarkhaven into hell." Zubov claimed, knowing were the Reicherer squad was based, where they had a few spare pilots that would only be cannon fodders in a future CSB attack.

Why he was so certain of his future success? Because Kupchenko had promised them to upgrade their MiG-31s in MiG-31X/V that some mercenary had created by heavily tuning her Foxhound. He justified the little delays by the fact that he needed some data from this very mercenary. And this little delay was acceptable, given the fact that it would make them more agile than these Su-37 they battled against today.

"Schwarze Falke 4, activating VTOL turbines. We have sighted some of the downed airmen." The DW-2 commanding officer announced the final good news of this fight.

They did not suffer a single loss, in the end. Which they welcome with great relief, and with a bit of expectation from Kupchenko. This small but decisive part of his puzzle had been added to his greater scheme. And the bit of "controlled chaos" he had introduced in the great scheme of things for the new unholy alliance of Belka and Osea was the last thing he needed to achieve success, and soon victory.

He knew that Hoffnung would irremediably fall. This was the last step back he would take. But it was only to be in a good en garde position, from which any attacks would be parried before he would deal the final blow.

 **Bienenstock Air Base, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 16:00, Weather: medium cloud coverage**

Iskanda had listened to Vasquez's advices. She had disclosed her true identity. After all, she would have had to, even without the bit of guilt she was now feeling due to the becoming of her leader that she seemed to care quite a lot, more than the friendly relationship Iskanda had with Pixy.

Obviously, she was expecting some people to be angry about her. They trusted her with their lives for a number of times this morning, and they entrusted her one of their planes. Which they were realizing now what she could have done with it if she had ill-minded intents toward the defenders of Hoffnung. Yet, she had taken part in the defense instead of helping her supposed allied.

"So, what, you got a change of heart and went rogue?" Donner eight asked, right after Donner three had screamed that he was right no to trust her in the first place, which she nodded. And when people trust the untrustworthy, it meant that they were in dire situation. That assertion was right, even if most of the evacuation of Hoffnung had been done with yet mitigated results but without too many losses in civilians or military hardware.

"It's a bit more complicated. Some Oseans framed me for the almost pyrrhic victory we got at Futuro and wanted me dead. I killed their killers, and then I had some encounters that led me to become this new pilot that flew alongside you today." She summarized the few weeks she had spent since her failure at destroying Excalibur, under the inquisitive gaze of Oswin Neugel and the pilots of Donner squad. Some of them were not even looking her straight in the eye, not wanting to talk with a turncoat.

"You have only created yourself more enemies, Galm 1." Neugel recognized that such move was foolish at best, and surely executed without any long-term strategy.

"I just created a more target-rich environment for my point of view." Iskanda corrected his statement. After all, having to fight both allied and North Belkans above B7R had ensured her quite a big killcount for this day alone. And if she had not gone on this path, she would have never had the joy of killing those new targets that the A-12 Avengers were.

"And what did you plan next? Betray us so you'll have even more targets?" Donner 3 asked, still having a hard time coping with the fact that this woman that he had come to trust after having seen her fly alongside them and ensuring the safety of civilians while being ready to risk her own.

"Nein Danke. I was shot down twice by Pendragon's achievements, and in all honesty, I don't want to try a third time." She cut short the traitorous thoughts that had once been growing inside her mind, but that she had to sway out when she rushed to the rescue of Vasquez -even if she didn't know back then that she would have to help this very person-. But had she known, she would have still acted. She was not someone who would let evil act. It did not matter that people would see her as evil, but she was surely the lesser of the two evils in many ways. Besides, she knew of the proverb "jamais deux sans trois" (third time's a charm), but what would happen to her if she tried a third one would not be a charm but more of a death curse.

"Denn was (then what)?" Neugel asked, being a bit more level-headed than the pilots under his command. After all, himself had to cope with the fact that quite a third of the losses caused by the Galm team were due to his best former student, Larry Foulke.

"I want to help. To fight for those who can't." She expressed her new reasons she had found while battling with the Hexen's for her and Vasquez's sake.

"And what do you plan to do against these high-altitude attackers? Even Excalibur and the Merlin's are less effective at such height, due to the air density decreasing and thus the conductivity decreases." Neugel pointed out the physical facts that explained why using high altitude planes put them less at risk than low flying stealth that Merlin would irremediably track and target. It could damage external systems or engines a bit, enough to slow those high-altitude attackers, but not enough to make them fall from high.

"I plan to go back to Valais and borrow the Nord 1500 Griffon. It was good to intercept the XB-70 Valkyries of your Ragnarök squad, so it should do the job against militarized X-15s, weaponized SR-71, and old high-altitude Yukte and Osean fighters." She exposed her simple idea. It was quite a risky one, but nothing was not risky for her. Otherwise, where would have been the fun in a plan without any risks.

"A bold move. But fortune seems to favor the bold nowadays." Oswin judged this move that had at least a bit more strategy behind it that simply fly in a tunnel in the pursuit of an armored train, and then destroy the following railroad bridge, and all of that with a solo winged plane.

"So, you'll let me go?" She asked, with a little lack of confidence in her voice. She had little confidence in her own plan, even if she did great this morning. She now understood how hard the job of a tactician, having to cope with all of these contingencies.

"It's not like we had better ways to remove this threat. You'll leave in the evening, so they'll have already left Valais Air Base when you'll arrive there." Oswin agreed that this might be their best shot. If new technologies with decades of advancements did not work, maybe old forgotten prototypes that almost flew more with her at the wheel than during its time as a prototype back in the 1960's could do the job.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 18:00, Weather: small cloud coverage**

Situated now far away from the frontline, the Valais Air Base that had lost since a few weeks its title of "little skiing station" was still busy, being located right outside of the effective range of the TFLS of the Belkan Wunderwaffe. Even if now the operators had another name for their base, "little hiking station". This increase of activity could only mean something: an allied attack was imminent. Would it be another fruitless engagement like the two last battles above B7R? Or would something actually change in the great scheme of things?

"Change is not made by the world itself, Pixy. Change is made by everyone in the world, if they are smart enough to look at themselves and make a change, rather than hoping for the others to change." He said to himself, stuck in a perplex stance, as he was looking at some Osean tankers that were landing here from the second story of the control tower. They were coming here in order for the Osean air force to have a refueling point, since they had planned to circumvent the defensive network of the CSB by going around it, and for this purpose they required this base, as well as some base of FATO to be fill with fuel and various ammo to rearm the allied airplanes if they had met some South Belkan resistance on the way there.

He had not had any official intel on this, but just listening to the talks in the control tower was enough to deduce it. Furthermore, since they had requisitioned Hervin to get any more intel they could get on the aerial defenses around Hoffnung, Blumenberg and Sudentor, the two first being cities having joined the CSB, while Sudentor seemed to want to gain independence. But Sudentor had far less industries, so it was considered to be a lesser threat. Herr Steller was quite busy too right now, having to deal with the logistics of all those new supplies. Pixy had met him once today, exiting the old hangar of the Griffon. He wondered what he was doing with the old jet, but never had the time to ask him properly, with the supplies arriving shortly after.

But his little time he spent hanging out with Henri and the others radio and radar went to an end when they had to transmit the order for every pilot to join the others for the briefing. Pixy would join them, but without much interest for the oncoming mission. He had only shown interest in the last two battles because he knew he could get revenge. But what was there to be won, he could not see it. Only a bit of destruction from a city that must been now abandoned and evacuated. But full of booby traps and other mines if the Osean tried to investigate the factories, he was sure of that.

Still, he was almost surprised to see the logo of Axe and Hammer and not some Osean industries, since all people doing the briefing were Oseans.

"The unit of aggressive reconnaissance have done their report" the Major Orson Perrault began the briefing, with a bit of disdain as he was talking of these units. Because he knew what these units were comprised off, low-life, cowards, and criminals that Osea had no use except for dirty jobs and cannon fodder.

"The Belkan forces are beginning to take flight. The industrial city of Hoffnung is crucial to the enemy's industrial strategy and the heart of its war productions. The Allied Forces have decided that all Belkan war production must be stopped to expedite the end of the war and has requested your participation in this operation. The operation will primarily involve the bombing of ground facilities by the Allied Forces' bombers using cruise missiles fired from Fatoan airspace to limit potential losses that Excalibur might cause. Your mission is to support those bombers and attack enemy facilities. We have achieved near total air supremacy over the target area, but do not let your guard down. There may still be sporadic resistance." He resumed the briefing, as the croissant-shaped valley was drawn on the display screen, with a few red targets all around the place, and some yellow targets for the factories that were supposedly without defense. Then it zoomed out as he spoke of the bombers, B-52s that would more or less be used as a distraction for the allied strike fighters to get close enough.

But the words that almost cause Pixy to burst of laugh were "near total" and "sporadic resistance". Because Pixy had very little doubts that there would be more than a sporadic resistance. Especially due to the call he received a bit early on from the OIA : they wouldn't have ranted on the casualties they had attributed to his former leader if they hadn't suffer massive casualties, which might meant they were walking right into a trap. But he let the Osean arrogance took over, sure that many of them would die tonight. And again, he would not care a single bit.

"Anything to add?" Perrault asked to everyone, as he was about to close the display software.

Again, Pixy stayed quiet. He had nothing to add, other than this fight might be the last pyrrhic victory the CSB would concede to the allies and North Belka. Because he saw no reasons to believe that their forces would have any more success against the Belkan Wunderwaffe. If he was still in the allied forces after this battle, of course. Otherwise he would not care about the becoming's of the allied forces, even if he currently cared very little, especially for those Oseans in this room.

And in the evening, a F-15C and a F-35X would take off. Both had been tasked with different missions, but in the end, they would be taking off with the same hopes: those of a better ending for this battle, and then, for this war. Yet, what does a better end mean?

 **Well, another last semi-filler chapter, since this is not all aerial dogfights.  
** **Of course, Iskanda cannot be as badass as she is now four years ago, but she had perfected her skills since.  
** **The final piece of this puzzle is in place. But what puzzle are we talking about? The only puzzle that is worth solving, Captain Pellaeon. The complete and utter destruction of this new heretic alliance. And NO SPACE WHALES WILL STOP ME!**

 **I hope everybody is fine even with the whole covid-19 situation.**

 **Feel free to comment, subscribe, follow.**

 **Und bis nächst Mal, Lesern und Leserinnen.**


	26. Chapter 123: Operation Cannibal 2 part1

"Impossible is only in the dictionary of fools" Napoleon Bonaparte

 **Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 21:00, Weather: heavy risks of thunder.**

As if the weather was in accordance with his state of mind, the clouds that once were light and peaceful felt heavy, and ready to burst and burn the world with their thunder. He did not accept his contract for this, to destroy his homeland. He signed to defend and protect Ustio, which he was almost seeing as a second homeland by now. The people living in Ustio were not full of hatred toward Belka like Oseans, after all they had had much of their history together. And above all, there was more bravery in fighting for the building of something new that just to destroy the old ground of this world.

This is why he did not choose to rush on the defenders of Hoffnung. What was left to defend other than old stones and the history they once carried, anyway? At least that was what the sight of a burning city meant to him.

He did destroy a few SAMs and AA guns upon their arrival near that factory with four chimneys at the South of Hoffnung, but then chose to engage the ones he had signed up for to kill : the followers of the Rald Partei that once swore to change Belka in ten years. But maybe it wouldn't require ten years to destroy them and really change Belka for good, and for more than ten years.

And thus, he was engaged by some Typhoons from North Belka in a dark grey camo, bearing red Belkan cross. They fired XLAAs at him, but he dived between some abandoned buildings and made their fire be shot for trash.

"This is Blue Arrow 1, I am targeted by some of those modified F-35s!" One of the Osean F-15E pilot complained, as he was taken aback by the unusual mobility of the F-35X. Pixy had let the last members of Donner squad alive as he rushed to the North to fight his true enemies.

"You said you want our Hoffnung to burn. But your hopes will burn first!" Donner 3 replied with all the harshness he could master in his voice, tangled in a scissoring maneuver with the Osean craft. Still, the modifications of the F-35X were making him gain ground with each second passing. A QAAM was his first shot, which hit the F-15Es on the tip wing and made the Osean aircraft yaw extensively. And this unwanted maneuver resulted in an uncontrolled spin that take him to the ground, and to his death, as the following F-35X dived on him at full speed, and it was quite hard for the Osean to recover with his plane struck by one more missile and filled with Belkan lead.

"Pixy, what are you doing at the North? We need you here!" Blue arrow 3 asked why this mercenary was acting so much as a glory hound when he was said to be someone caring for his wingmen. But these Osean were not his wingmen. His wingmen had all died to Excalibur. And his caring nature also died there. This is why Pixy had no concern about that Osean rookie back in B7R, or for those Osean Mudhens right now.

Thus, his answer didn't show any sympathy toward the threatened Oseans, which despite their numeric superiority were dying left and right to the wrath of the Donner squad, that were only four, but more than enough to have scored one kill each on the Osean Lightning arrow of F-15Cs and Blue arrow of F-15E.

"I am busy with the North Belkans. Apparently, they don't want to help me attack the southerners." Pixy disposed of this little bit of guilt that he was feeling as he was seeing more and more Osean blue dot disappear from his radar. Some Oseans had talked about that during the flight over Gebet, Recta and Fato, that North Belka might ally with Osea to have more chances at destroying the CSB. But Pixy wanted nothing from such kind of alliance. He knew there was people you shall not seek to ally with, but only to destroy. And these North Belkans were amongst them.

As such, he went ham on these supposedly allied Belkans, evading their second volley of XLAAs with ease, flying sometimes a bit tilted to evade their gun fire once he got closer, before opening fire, launching one QAAM on the aircraft at the outside of the enemy four-plane formation, before inverting to evade a gun burst from the one at the middle left, and thus getting in a good position to fire his missile at the middle right plane. Then he dived a bit still inverted, and climb back on the Typhoon from below, still inverted which caused him to fill a bit too much of blood in his head, but it was the price to pay to get a good angle of fire on the EF-2000. Which exploded after a gun burst in his twin ducts.

Then Pixy inverted back his plane, before going on the hunt for more North Belkan, on the form of MiG-21s this time. If Belka was using such old planes, it must mean they were getting desperate. But he was going to give them a few more reasons to dive further into the path of desperation. He knew he couldn't attack openly allied forces to protect the almost already abandoned city of Hoffnung, but killing those supposedly allied North Belkans was as much help for the CSB as when he dealt with the Grabacrs over B7R.

And thus, at the south, the killing of Osean attackers kept going. Still, the Donner squad was not infallible, and soon one of their members was down by three F-15C that kept spamming QAAMs while two more F-15E were targeting him from long range with SAAMs. Yet, when Donner 5 realized he was doomed, he pulled a short Himmelman, before firing every of his weapons at the three Eagles behind him: four XMAAs, and pairs of QAAMs and missiles. None of them survived. And as his plane burned and he finally had to bail out, he had the pleasure to see the two F-15Es that had finished him get taken down by Donner 3 who had taken advantage of the fact that the two were a bit too much focused on his F-35X and not on their surroundings.

"The flame of our Hope will burn all of you, Oseans. Even if we have to drag ourselves in the fire to do so!" Donner eight threatened the other Oseans, as he executed a bold move in perfect coordination with another squadmates that was pursuing one F-15C too. both fired on the rudders of the F-15C as they were beginning to roll to evade each other, and thus the two damaged Eagles collided with each other in a bright explosion.

"Then we will choke your hopes under the weight of our bombs." A F-15E pilot snapped back as he was pursued by Donner 8, and dropped two SFFSs on the "rugby field" factory, which created a cloud of shrapnels and metallic parts due to the partial destruction of the metallic structure of the said factory. And if the Osean pilot was hit by numerous small flying metallic part that caused some loss of control, but nothing that he could not recover in his stable Strike Eagle. However, the reactor of the F-35X behind him did not like that, as parts were sucked through the inlet, and damage the inside. And as a bright flame replaced the pinkish light of the afterburner, Donner eight understood that the fight was over for him.

But for one Belkan mercenary up North, the fight was far from over. He fired a volley of XMAA to disperse the Fishbeds, knowing that once they would be scattered it would be an easy fishing party -after all the MiG-21s was known for its poor visibility-. Still, most of them did not scatter like he had foreseen, they rather chose to climb to avoid his fire.

"Climbing to the sky won't guarantee you a place in paradise." He commented, as he dived vertically, before enacting an Himmelman that aligned him right below two of the fleeing Migalevs, which he quickly gunned down for one while firing a pair of missiles on the other.

Then he kept flying straight, before enacting a loop toward the MiG-21s that had leveled and kept their forward motion, maybe looking for the F-15C into the dark. Furthermore, he had cut his afterburners as he enacted this maneuver, rendering his aircraft less visible in the night sky.

"Wo ist diese verdammte Söldner (where is that damned merc)?" One Belkan pilot sought for him, but find nothing, due to the poor field of view of these MiGs.

"Ich weiß nicht (I don't know)" Another enforced the idea that using such old hardware was quite annoying. They were supposed to have MiG-31s as interceptors, but they had been sent to another squadron, which had been sent to take down the transports ensuring the evacuation of hardware from Hoffnung to Tauberg, but had been irremediably mowed down by the ERAAMs of the DW-2s that protected the aerial corridor.

And as he pitched his aircraft a bit to have a better looks at his six, he saw something coming fast. Even if it was the last thing he would ever see anyway, as these flashes he saw were from the muzzle of Pixy's gun. His aircraft and his body were riddled with bullets, and the first exploded five seconds later, destroying the latter and putting an end to his sufferance.

"Now I see him" Another North Belkan pilot noticed the explosion, and was now rushing toward the South. Maybe these Osean would have a bit more mercy than this merc. But he never had the time to verify this assessment, as he heard quite a harsh reply, while Pixy's F-15C was accelerating far faster than his plane, emphasizing its pilot's threat :

"What you see is just death coming for you, Ralder !" He said as he flew by his side, before tilting hard and firing a pair of missiles on his side. Both impacted the rear of the craft, destroying the engine and engulfing the fighter in a sea of bright orange flames.

The last aircraft of this five-plane formation chose to engage him head on. Maybe he wanted to try even if he was going to fail, or he was seeking to quicken his death. But whatever he wanted at the beginning, he regretted dearly his choice, as the far more agile F-15C met no difficulty at avoiding his salvo of missiles, while he took some bullets on his air duct that decreased its efficiency, thus slowing his aircraft a lot.

"Damn tricky merc." The Belkan swore, as he even had trouble steering his aircraft properly due to this loss of engine power. And thus, after the two aircraft cross each other's path, he was not able to evade the QAAM this Belkan merc had launch a few seconds before they crossed each other. He did see the missile fly by him as it was launched from a bit too close to have a good vector of approach, but then was unable to avoid after the missile turned back toward him and finished his already damaged plane.

The next thing that happened once more make him doubt of the usefulness of this attack, as he was flying over some older part of Hoffnung, in the middle of the croissant-shaped valley. There was standing the history of the city of Hope. Use of the past was meaningful here. Because it became past that would only survive in the memory of those who once lived in those place with a volley of heavy duty missiles, that were coming from the East, fired by the Osean B-52 flying over Fato. It was said that they were flying overcrowded area to deter the CSB from using Excalibur to shoot them down. To see these building filled with history being destroyed with such violence shook his conviction:

"Tomahawks just hit the city? Are those guys serious ?"

"They are dead serious, Solo Wing. Orders are to level this city. Destroy every brick and kill every man standing in our way." An Osean responded coldly, before dropping some napalm bomb on old buildings that had stood there since the middle-age. Building of wood and pitch that had survived the industrial age burned in mere seconds.

Then he noticed that on the Western side of the city, fire broke suddenly. Most of them being old factories. He remembered having visited these decades ago, as the Belkan army wanted their pilot to better understand the process behind the design, manufacture, and maintenance of their future jets. Not only Belka's past, but his was burning. But this was for a reason, that was justified soon:

"Burn every factories and warehouse. Destroy what could not be evacuated. Do not let anything for North Belka nor the allied." The voice of his former commander ordered, as noise of explosion and fires could be heard in the background. That caused Pixy to wonder why Oswin had left the Alderneste Base to come here, while more explosion could be seen.

"This is Luchs unit. Taking-off now."

Pixy then saw some last transport that was leaving the area. It had some white paintjob with a blue line at mid-fuselage and a blue Belkan cross on its wingtips and empennage. He knew what it was: an Ambulanzflugzeug (ambulance plane). So, this unit they had crossed path with at Aarlon had the role of evacuating the wounded of the Belkan army, and now of the CSB. His sense of honor banned him from shooting at such unarmed transport. He had no qualm about finishing a wounded opponent or even a damaged bomber but firing on that would be nothing but shameful. So, he kept going south, crossing the path of the two Donner squad members that were moving North to support this delayed transport. The reason for this delay was that they had had some nacelle issues, otherwise it would have left far sooner.

But he saw some Oseans that apparently had no honor, and were firing their SAAMs and XMAAs at the Belkan craft. Using his QAAMs, he shot down some of the semi-actives, while the Belkan C-130 was using its chaff and flares to disrupt the XMAAs, and with Donner squad using their weapon pods to fired their owns as retaliation at the Oseans. Only one XMAA detonate near the white craft, but he was enough to shake it badly. But it was enough for Pixy to shout at the Oseans, ashamed to have such dishonorable allies:

"It's an Ambulanzflugzeug, Morons! So, stand down!" He even fired some bullets toward an Osean to force him outside of his windows of fire.

"You're defending deserters that are fleeing. Besides, they are fighting on behalf of a rogue state created by anarchists. Thus, they aren't covered by international laws on this matter." One of the Osean of the Blue arrows counter argued. He was one of the few that had complained when Pixy had rushed to the North solely to kill Ralders. He was beginning to get sick of this almost righteous mercenary.

"If you do that nothing will cover you either. Last time I checked paper is not good at stopping bullets!" Pixy snapped back at the Osean, while having his hand right above his IFF switch, pondering if he would switch it off or not and fire more than warning shot on the Osean crafts.

"It's treason then." That very Osean chuckled as he was describing what many were expecting from a merc that was mostly known amongst the Osean army for the loss he inflicted on their recon assets. And to see that this expectation was met was almost making him laugh, on a heavy laugh.

"I haven't betrayed myself." Pixy replied, but instead of throwing anger at the Osean, he responded with righteous indignation. Now he was understanding the comments of Hervin when they talked about betrayal. Maybe, when entire armies, when entire cultures and countries seemed to commit betrayal against themselves and the very ideals they had argued for hours to claim their adherence to such ideals, there was a need for betrayers in this world he was fighting in and for. Maybe it was a means to brought back some measures of balance to this backward-spinning world.

"It's why I…" He would use this reason to answer a question that someone would ask him a decade later. "will fight to defend my ideals while you are burying yours." Pixy's hand stopped hesitating, as he stated his new allegiance, and switch off his IFF identifier, sealing their fates and his.

With this device switched down, on his radar all planes could be locked, all appearing enemies for an instant. But he did not need any help from electronics and avionics to know his true enemies, as more Osean reinforcements were coming from both North and South. From the South, F-15Cs and Es as well as a few F/A-18C Hornets.

But from the North, he had the displeasure to discover a few hours after his former leader in the same place the new A-12 Avengers. He had seen them once as he flew near some volcanic island at the North-West of the Ceres Ocean, not that far from the Osean coast. But these were on a junkyard, and he thought that these prototypes would rot there until someone found them some use. Apparently, the EMP disaster had been that someone.

"I'll take care of the fighters. Shoot these A-12." Pixy suggested, as he headed South. The two F-35Xs headed North, and the C-130 toward Blumenberg, where he knew that the battle of this morning had been a crushing defeat for the North Belkan attackers, and where he would have better chances of survival.

"Ver. Viel Glück." Donner eight agreed to do their last stands, which was now in the most desperate situation: no more ground defenses, or only a few dispersed SAMs and AA guns. There were now three against the allied forces.

"Macht die Alderneste stolz, Foulke (Make the Eagle nest proud)." Were the encouragement of his former base commander. For an instant Pixy had thought he would have to fight this man he once saw as some kind of fatherly figure like many others cadets that had little interactions with their family during their hard years of becoming a pilot in the proud Belkan Air Force.

Pixy saw the attackers. Often, he founded himself to be outnumbered. Here he was outnumbered by at least one to fifteen, as most small Osean task force used formation made of five planes. Thus, there was ten Eagles and five Hornets. F-15Cs could wait, he analyzed. They only had their XMAAs that could be jammed, and QAAM that could be fooled by flares if the latter were properly used. Even if by doing so he knew he would have the F-15Cs on his tail during his planned slaughter of the Hornets and Strike Eagle whose SAAMs were enough to shot down the Ambulanzflugzeug.

"To see a Belkan commit betrayal is becoming a common thing." An Osean quoted one line from their political leaders that kept spitting their venom for hours on every channel of the Osean TVs. In these words, disdain and a feeling of false superiority and false unity could be heard. Because they thought they were immune to betrayal. They were not. Not especially to this kind of betrayal, the betrayal of idealist wanting to live for their ideas, and not just to survive.

"Es ist kein Verrat. Ich tue nur das Richtige (It's not betrayal. Just doing the right thing)." Pixy said calmly, as he fired on his former allies without a simple glimpse of guilt. What was the right thing was only a matter of point of view, anyway.

Four XMAAs left his pilons to kill four F/A-18Cs. He had planned this shot, as they tried to fire their SAAMs, which he evaded easily, since his missiles were fire-and-forget, and as such he did not have to keep his target in sight. Yet something unexpected happened: as a F/A-18C was pulling a barrel-roll but too late, he went out of his path, but still exploded in the end. What changed with his missed evasive maneuver was that he exploded right in front of the F-15E formation, with at least two planes taking damage from either the shockwaves or the parts set free at amazing speeds.

"Damn this Hornet. He made me missed my shot on that Belkan!" One Osean pilot that had taken some hits on his guider for his SAAMs complained, being tired to see the uselessness to send rookies to the frontline. Even as cannon fodder they weren't good, as they would more than often do foolish stunts that could jeopardize veterans.

And these jeopardized veterans were jeopardized enough to be unable to evade the wrath of the Belkan mercenary, that had just evade four QAAMs through a fully controlled spin, before getting out of it, using the high stability of the F-15C, and gunning one of these Osean F-15Es from below while firing missiles and QAAMs on other F-15Es.

"Just shoot him down already! He's just one man!" A F-15E WSO shouted, as he saw on their small mirror the lights of his afterburners.

"I'm just one man. But you're less than men. Traue Mann haben Mut. Sie haben keine. (True men have courage. You have none)" Pixy tossed some half-philosophical line as he performed a Split-S, making his afterburners disappear for some seconds, before enacting some Schräge Musik on the Osean fighter-bombers. They tried to scatter when they heard the gun firing at them, but as they had already suffered quite a lot of damage, their engines did not keep up when they entered uncontrolled spin from such erratic maneuvers. It took only two XMAAs to pulverize both fighters before they had another chance to level their fighters. The last F-15Es thought he was safe as he was away from the two that just went down, but it was without counting on the wide radius of fire of Pixy's QAAMs, that he had modified a while ago.

"Surround him!" The Osean F-15C leader ordered. His squadron was named Black Knight and had a plain grey paintjob with black and red stripes on their wingtips and rudders and had some medieval-like helmet made of white lines on a black shield.

"You haven't had a very chivalrous behavior tonight, Knight. Besides, you title should be "the footmen of B7R". Pixy commented, as the squad tried to surround him. He was just taunting them on the fact that they had been defeated in the first weeks of the war over B7R. They were found almost death from dehydration by some Belkan patrols on the Ustian boundaries and sent to Directus as POW. Pixy wondered how they had managed to leave Directus with the Airport having been rendered out of commission by fire from Excalibur. Maybe this was one of the reasons why they were five instead of twenty like they were at the beginning of the war.

Besides, Pixy had been taught very well how to deal with these people trying to encircle you. It would only work if they were at different heights and not on a single circle like they were doing here. So, he tricked them into attacking by firing at their leader, causing them to break the circle to fire at him.

"We got you." They said as they fired their missiles on him. However, at this very moment, he banked right very hard, causing what his former friend Thesermeister would have called some "provoked boundary layer separation". Or just some instability leading to spin to vulgarize.

"Sorry but laws of aerodynamics said otherwise." Pixy quoted one line of Thesermeister, as he was falling out of the way of their missiles. Even their QAAMs could not follow his sudden dive, as he had first flown with a bit of pitch to fool them before his dive.

"Dive and follow him morons!" Black Knight leader grunted as his men that had fired a bit too late, and thus had allowed that merc to land some hits on his ailerons. By acting in such a way, this merc had prevented him to help his comrade. He knew if he dived, he would not recover with such badly damaged control surfaces.

But it was all a trap that he should have seen coming, but they were far too much fed up with will of vengeance for the downed Blue Arrow squad as well as the F-15E pilot and WSO they had come to befriend as they had been shot down above B7R too and they had to fight to stay alive in this harsh terrain that B7R was.

The trap was sprung wide open when they were fully in their dive. Because by that time Pixy had already done a vertical Himmelman and was releasing his last XMAAs on the falling F-15Cs that were not able to do barrel-roll vertically. Well, one of them did, but by doing so he broke his airbrakes and thus couldn't avoid a gun burst from the merc as he climbed back, twisting his tuned Eagle between their gun burst, missiles and QAAMs while all of them died.

"That's not possible. We were the best." The Osean leader lamented, as he remembered the once glorious result that they had got in some international training with Yuktobania.

"Good use of preterit. That's for past. And the past must die for a new future to be created." Pixy said as he leveled from his hard climb, watching with bliss the four F-15C falling to their death. The XMAAs hadn't destroyed the planes entirely, but with the acceleration, the damages were enough to make their Eagles split in a thousand pieces even before they would hit the ground.

The Osean leader tried to deny this truth, and tried to evade this former allied turned rogue. But trying in such situations was not enough. Death did not let room for tries. Pixy neither. A gun burst finished the damaged F-15C, then Pixy rushed to kill the last F/A-18C, who was almost at SAAM range by this time.

However, on the Northern front of Hoffnung, Donner 3 and eight were not so lucky. They lacked the superior mobility to overcome their numerical inferiority that Pixy had. Those A-12s were pretty agile if not fully loaded. And even without their full load their XMAAs and dual guns were more than enough to damage the F-35X when they ran into each other's formation. Indeed, nearly ten A-12s were shot down on the first joust, and the second line of twelve Avengers suffered eight losses.

"We can do it 3!" Donner eight tried to cheer up his wingmen as they were now attacked by all survivors of these two lines. There were still eight aircrafts in total.

"Protect Luchs, yes. Protect uns, I'm not sure." Donner 3 half-agreed with his partner, his doubt having grown with the punishment his plane suffered. They had little chances to survive such unbalanced fight. But they would not let any chances to the Osean either.

If Schwarze Luchs had been here, they might have had a slightly more balanced fight. But she was needed elsewhere. They knew they were part of something bigger. What was the worth of stopping one push if the entire battle would be lost in the end. Would this battle end up with a true victor? Not really, Gustav commented, as he readied himself for their very last last stand, with multiple structural integrity issues

"Denn keine Überlebenden." Helmut stated the fate they deserved for those Oseans.

Another wild exchange of fire started, with most of the A-12 getting shot down, while the F-35Xs suffered even more damage. A XMAA ripped the wingtips of Donner 8 and the fragments of the impact damaged his engine, while Donner 3 almost evaded a pair of missiles, but one of them connected with his XMAA pod. Hopefully, he had fired his last and it did not lead to further explosion. Still, they knew they were not combat-worthy after this last stand. But two A-12 had survived and were heading to the transport.

Both of them knew Pixy would arrive to late as he was dueling with the F/A-18C that was only a flying wreck by that time. They had loss their radio, and thus could not say "radio failure", but they did not need it to communicate. They looked at each other, before pushing their afterburners to their peaks.

At this moment, the A-12 pilots would have loved to be flying XP-79 Rammers. Thus, they would have survived the shock with their magnesium monocoque wings. Here they didn't, and all four pilots had to bail out because their planes weren't stable enough to let their pilots become new Solo Wings, while the true Solo Wing finished his target, that ended up burning and impacting the Löre river at full speed.

 **Somewhere near the Belkan-Fatoan border, 11/06/1995, 21:20, Weather: little rain**

For a while, the skies of Hoffnung was clear of fighters. It was not clear of threat, as more tomahawk missile would strike at the now abandoned city, that was only illuminated by the raging fire slowly destroying it. For Osea, this was a pleasant sight, the sight of the last hopes of Belka burning, before they would definitively extinguish it. That is what they had planned. However many of their plans had not come to fruition since the beginning of the war, if they only took this simple fact into account they might have truly win something today.

Pixy, after having seen the Ambulanzflugzeug left the area unscathed, left the airspace too, but in the opposite direction. He would fight over these weakened countries that Fato was by now. They had been beaten by Belka, and now both members of this un-righteous alliance were using its people to shield themselves from Excalibur. This was the real extent of their measures that Osea was ready to take. After all, in history, the so-called liberators and crusaders were rarely giving to everyone their freedom back. Peacekeepers would only enforce their version of peace filled with other lies. And if there was something Pixy hated, it was liars.

Yet, he did let his hatred on the backburner, choosing not to engage the first wave of bombers, as he was slowly bypassing their escort, flying over the meanders of some Fatoan river that was joining with the Löre a few kilometers North of Hoffnung. He could have been faster in his infiltration of the allied defensive network, but if he used his afterburners the IR signature would have been increased to such a level that he would have been splashed by a lot of missiles from the escorts of the bombers squadrons of Osean B-52s and B-2s, and Yukte Tu-95s. How had he seen the Spirits? Well, as he turned off his allied IFF he was able to log in the phase modulation radio line of the Merlins, that was displaying the locations of Osea stealth bombers, far from the frontline.

The escort was reduced here, maybe to prevent detection by CSB and the B-2s being targeted by Excalibur or the Merlins. But their squads of Yuktes Su-33s and MiG-29Ks they had launched from the few pristine aircraft carrier, and accompanied by the ordinary long range fighters of Osea, their twin seaters F-14Ds and F/A-18Cs, as well as the new threat of the A-12 Avengers that were firing their SODs from long range, apparently using the data link of the tomahawk missile to guide their missile, none of those squads would be there quickly enough to save the B-2s he was about to perform some Schräge Musik on them. After all, they expected attackers to come on their side of front, not from behind since they were surrounded by allied skies. Or what was temporarily allied skies.

He had managed to climb quite silently and had even set his engine idle for a few seconds as he was heading toward the central bomb-bays of one B-2. It was quite a risky maneuver, but always a less risky one that flying indoors. Pixy was not claustrophobic, but the simple fear of death was enough to prevent him to resort to such tactics. Especially at night when none of those tunnels would be lighted

"I thought I just seen something. Some Belkan stragglers maybe?" The Osean copilot of the very B-2 Pixy was targeting said, but not before long he saw very well what he had spotted for a second.

He saw it very well because the fire of his burning plane lighted up the sky, and a few seconds later, as the roaring sound of Pixy's F-15C's engines could be heard, he turned and began firing on the line of B-2, as he just took down the one at the far left, and was now going straight on their line of formation. The next two kills went without any hitch, but then the others tried to run. This forced Pixy to spend some time to catch them, but now he was not afraid of using his afterburners. This caused him to be spotted, but nothing mattered to him right now. He was just a man, after all.

"We have some lone F- 15C on a rampage on our backline! Visuals confirm it's the rogue Ustian!" A B-2 crewmen sent to the escort, as they had managed to made the F-15Cs overshoot, but by doing so they had almost stalled.

"We have to come from the far front of the armada. ETA 10 minutes." One Osean fighter pilot indicated, as they had almost no interceptors capable of catching that threat in time. This kind of fighters had been the one suffering the more losses above B7R after all.

"But he's getting all of us killed!" Another B-2 pilot protested, as he saw the demise of the B-2 that had stalled, and faced in the following instants a frontal attacks, with Pixy firing without targeting at the air intakes of the bomber, that exploded in a bright orange flame the next second, as part of their ammo was incendiary.

"And I'm counting on it." Pixy added, as he mercilessly gunned down another B-2, reducing their number from ten to three survivors, but taking them down had depleted him of a third of his remaining gun ammo.

Still, if with each second passing by he could take down one bomber, he saw with each seconds the Osean and Yukte escort getting closer and closer. However, there was something none of the two fighting forces here, a one man army against a bomber armada had taken into account.

That something was that the TempestAngreiffSchiffe, the Aegis-class of Belka had suffered damage from some experimental ships that were part of the marine achievements of Projekt Pendragon. Their BAWS bays that had been repurposed as ASATs in order to saturate Excalibur and lessen the threat on the Allied had been destroyed or neutralized, while the fast frigates had escaped the harbor of Anfang, using their sheer speed their unusual shape was granting them. These frigates were the first of their class of militarized trimarans as the higher-ups of the Belkan navy had come to call them. Sure, they were not the most armored, nor with the heavier weaponry or with stealth capacities, but their shape that dramatically reduced water friction had allow them to left a fully functional harbor without suffering a single losses amongst their crews, while their experimental weaponry made quick work of their targets.

As such, he wasn't a one man army against an armada. He had the involuntary support of a Wunderwaffe, and as he saw the bright explosions of B-52s and some of their escort lighting the sky, his heart was filled with hope. Hope that this battle could meet a different end that the one anticipated. Maybe a better end, he guessed as he was trying to use the nascent chaos to go back to over the river and flee back toward Belka. Chaos was on Belka's side today. And one of its agents was getting closer of her next goal.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 20:50, Weather: clear**

Iskanda's flight had been pretty boring as she flew Southward from Hoffnung. There was no allied to intercept in the vicinity. Of course, she ignored the fact that they were going through Gebet, Recta and Fato, but she knew that at this very moment the allied were nothing but inactive.

At one point she had even guessed that she could have run into Pixy and what was left of the Ustian Air Force. Then she thought about it a bit more and corrected herself: Pixy was all that was left of the Ustian air force. Of course, she did not cross his path either, but somehow deduced that he may be fighting somewhere. There was always place in battles for mercenaries, after all.

Still, when she thought that through as she crossed the Ustian border, she realized that it was maybe for the best that she didn't run into allied fighter and bomber armadas, that only equivalent numbers or Wunderwaffe could counter. And with her F-35X having been fitted with two conformal fuel tanks on its wings, were the external bays for XMAAs were situated, she had not been given any edge if she had to engage anyone. Her fighter was heavier, and these CFTs were less stealthy than these bays. Besides, flying with those attached to her craft was like flying with two barrel of fuel that needed only one bullet or one shrapnel to set her craft ablaze. That was something she dearly wanted to avoid, especially with her near-death experience this morning.

Right now, after more than an hour of eventless flight, she had reached the Valaisian Alps. It was almost weird to see the bottom of the closed valley between the chain of mountains not filled with snow, when she had gotten used to see nothing but white and grey for kilometers here. She was flying at low altitude to avoid being picked by the radars of Valais Air Base, that had some capacities against stealth planes. She kept this low altitude to compensate with the decreased stealth of her F-35X, but it came at a cost : having to deal with the powerful wind that would grow on the mountains edge, and caused her plane to be shaken like a leaf every ten seconds.

Besides, she could get surprised, as her radar was also blocked by the mountain range, and she had shut down her IFF to avoid identification by any Osean craft. She did that in the hope that they would rather try to intercept an unidentified fighter before firing at it. Something she would not do. She would not annihilate such UFO, but she would surely put a few rounds in such craft to hinder its fighting capacities. Sure, it was a violation of international rules, but Osea had already broken a few, so she could break a few too.

However, this eventless flight was about to become eventful in a matter of seconds.

A few kilometers above her, other F-35 but with a dark grey paintjob and sparks of lighting on their wingtips were flying toward the same airbase than her, obviously with other goals. The Stormbreaker squadron whose emblem was an axe surrounded by lightings in a yellow circle was only supposed to get there to refuel and then join the flying armada that was being deployed from Fato. But as they flew above some empty space that a snowslide caused by the fall of a bomber had created, and thus was devoid of any trees that could have hidden the black F-35s to their eyes.

"Stormbreaker 3 to 1, I am seeing some low flying F-35. Seemed like a lone fighter without identification nor IFF from up here." One pilot indicated, and tried to send message to this unknown fighter, but met only blank.

"I confirm. But it's not responding. Follow me people, we better intercept it if it has some ill-minded Belkan intent toward our refueling point." The leader agreed, and already pitched his aircraft down toward that F-35 that for some reason did not have the same radar signature than his. Maybe it was one of these F-35X their "aggressive recon" assets had been defeated by. But they had no certainty here. Their lack of recon sats that the Belkan Merlins kept destroying were once more a hindrance.

"Shouldn't we alert Valais?" Stormbreaker 5 asked to his leader, as they were only a few dozen kilometers away from the "hiking station".

"It's just one plane, 5. No need to worry." The number 4 replied with a feeling of false confidence. What could turn bad, anyway, he asked himself, as all five F-35s descended toward the valley in which this strange F-35 was flying on its own.

Even if the night had almost fallen, and thus the visibility was reduced, Iskanda had seen the F-35s diving toward her. They were quite visible on the glowing sundown. It had some of the same nuance of the bright flames that had engulfed the Hexens. And that would soon engulf those Oseans if they did not act.

"Hey, the unidentified just dropped something." Stormbreaker 2 noticed, as the small light of the explosive bolts separated its empty fuel tank. Lighted from this weight, they saw the F-35 accelerate, going in supercruise while they had to use their afterburners. So apparently this one had some different engines that allowed higher supercruise speed.

"Unidentified, respond!" Their leader asked one more time, before going full afterburners and flying above it for a second. Still, the Donner squad was unknown to these Oseans, and as they had erased their old Belkan mark on Iskanda's F-35X, he was unable to identify this craft through visuals.

"Let's hope this unknown know the international code." Their number two commented, as their leader oscillated on the roll axis, the code for "follow me". He was almost exasperated that this process was so long, and his voice betrayed him. This Schwarze squadron of Belka had no qualm about killing their targets they were supposed to intercept, and he didn't understand why they should show mercy to Belkans when their foes show none of it.

Code that Iskanda had followed very early this morning. But she was not flying a defenseless ultralight now. But an armed fighter. Even if she had only its standard anti-air ordnance, it was enough. So, why would she follow it now? She had a few tricks that she had thought about on her way from Hoffnung, and was ready to use them

"The unknown is lowering its gears. Maybe it understands us." Stormbreaker 4 analyzed, guessing that it must be having some radio failure.

However, it was only a trick of Iskanda, to make them focus on her gears, and not on her frontal bays that housed her QAAMs. And as their leader flew once more on her left, tilting his wing to indicate the direction of Valais, she fired a pair of them, while quickly retracting her gears.

"What happened?" Stormbreaker 5 gasped, as all had happened in a matter of seconds, going beyond his observation capacities. Furthermore, the unknown F-35s they had to use their afterburners to keep up with had suddenly decreased its speed, using her canards has air brakes to make all of them overflew her.

Then she fired another two QAAMs at the two at the edge of the four-plane formation, followed by a pair of missiles and a gun burst on the two planes at the center of the formation. The fate of the Osean was not bright in any way here. Only death was planned for them. Luckily, it was a quick one.

The plane on the right exploded when the QAAMs blow up his single engine. Stormbreaker 3 who was targeted by two missiles was taken out, but he did not go down alone. Maybe he would have liked to, so he would spare his comrade of a pretty humiliating fate. The humiliated was the Number four that managed to evade his QAAM by banking right hard, as on his left was only the steep slope of the mountains. But by doing so he hit the damaged fighter and both disappeared in a big flash of ochre-colored flames.

The last one did try to run as fast as he could to leave her range, but long before he could attempt anything he realized that his afterburners had suffered quite a lot of punishment from that unknown F-35's guns.

In a desperate attempt to call Valais Air Base, he still tried to use his very damaged afterburners. The flames were not of pinkish colors but of a bright orange and did not produced much thrust. As such, he had not even reached half of the distance to the vertical limits of the valley that he heard once more bullet grazing his planes. More red lights illuminated his cockpit, and one of them was the "radio failure". And not just his radio was encountering failures right now. His engine gave up against gravity, and he fell in a steep dive, his aircraft spinning out of control.

"Ah! Try recovering without canards and sharklets, du Osean dummkopf!" Iskanda mocked the Osean that was falling without any hopes of getting out of this alive.

Still, he tried to fall on her, but she perfectly avoided the falling Osean Lightning by a tight barrel-roll. Then she agreed that he was worth a bit of pity. She was not let him suffer all alone in those mountains. Making him join his dead comrades was far better. So, she dived on him as he was halfway to the ground. Two missiles shattered the Osean aircraft, with one of them blowing off his canopy and the pilot inside of hit. A shower of bright debris lighted the scene below her before the Valley was once more plunged into darkness.

 **Somewhere near the Belkan-Fatoan border, 11/06/1995, 21:30, Weather: little bit of rain**

Pixy knew he had not enough ammo to kill all of his enemies by himself. He would have to play safe and strategic and use the confidence the Oseans usually get when in numeric advantage. The closest aircraft to him were the Avengers, he saw them tracking him, and soon enough he had to evade a few XLAAs from time to time. Yet, as he watching the long range missile on his radar, he got a good look at the EMIs in the area and their sources, and from this draw some plan to end these Avengers with a dark blue paintjob and dark trims on their wingtips, making them a bit more difficult in usual night time but the artificial northern lights born out of the Belkan Wunderwaffe made every plane visible tonight, regardless of their camo.

Thus, he dashed forward, toward two converging sources of EMIs. On his radar, the jammed form was not the circular shape of usual jammers or Helligen Kolumne. But the linear form of the Merlin Satellite, that had a bit more versatility in their use. He just hoped the window would be wide enough to ensure his survival, and not his pursuer's. Pursuers that were currently hot on his tail, flying in a tight pyramidal formation.

"Leader to all blue monarch, follow him close. They won't use their pulse weaponry on their own forces." The Osean leader, which was at the very front of the formation ordered to his wingmate.

At least a dozen rogers responded, but their Avengers had trouble to gain speed on the F-15C, after all their shape had been optimized for stealth -which was nullified by the space supremacy the CSB had- and not for speed. Still, they were close enough to launch volleys of XLAAs and XMAAs, for the closest Oseans, but most of their fire was for trash due to the increasing EMIs in the area, and the few that weren't for trash were avoided by the faster Eagle.

Besides, it was not that simple difference in speed that doomed the Blue Monarch squadron. The true difference was that when Pixy had turned off his IFF, he was then able to activate his phase modulation radio. As such, his radar displayed not only the jammed parts, but the areas that would be jammed in a very close future. And where he was heading was part of those areas.

But that, the Oseans have no clue about that. No clue about the trap they were all walking through in supersonic. None but one who expressed his concern and his wishes of safer strategies they could use and still get the kill but with a bit more time :

"Sir, there's only five hundred meters between these two no-fly zone, shouldn't we try to go around ? I mean, they are only five-kilometer-wide, that's nothing we can't cover and still catch that Ustian traitor." Blue Monarch seven shared what safety was pushing him to do. But what part of this sky was safe, when whole chunks of the sky were becoming no-fly zone where your aircraft would be neutralized if you were lucky and vaporized if you were not.

"We have still time. All planes, afterburners at peaks!" His leader denied his wise deductions of his wingmen with an absolute tone. For him, there was no time to spare. This Ustian had already killed too much Oseans for this day, and he was intending to finish his killstreak right here and now.

However, some man had decided otherwise. Who was that man? Not Pixy who was still running and possessed no active defense systems. Nor any aces either. But a simple man, a simple cog in the very large wheel that the Pendragon Projekt was. A simple operator in charge of this area, and who was now adjusting some thruster to give a bit of a tilting motion to two satellites in a very specific area. He was smiling in his bunker as he sent the last order to the satellites, knowing how much mayhem he was going to cause amongst the Osean pilots that thought that using some new design would amount to anything in the great scale of things.

And as such, as the Merlins satellites oscillated, their field of no fly zone was shifted, and began to shift even more after Pixy flew between the two fields that were beginning to overlap.

Still, this was not unnoticed by the Oseans, as their leader hastily enforced his order, almost shouting at his squadmates :

"Go faster ! We need to go through!" Was the last order for many of his squadmates, as the EMIs were growing stronger by the second in front of them, with the air turning in blueish or pinkish taint here and there. It was the last because they did not hear anything afterwards.

Pixy on the other side was enjoying the pleasing sight of the Osean rushing to their doom. A very small number, maybe less than three had refused to die and zoomed in before leaving the no-fly zone their comrades were trying so dearly to go through. For the commander and his three closest wingmates, the damage was bearable, only their long-range coms and radars had been taken out. But for the others, which had been sent flying today with dreams of glory created by Osean propaganda, for these pilots only death came. When they tried to go through the ionized air their plane exploded from the inside, either their fuel tanks or their weapons from inside their bays. Maybe some screamed of pain or from the dread of their end, but no one would hear them scream with the state of their avionics once they flew inside the ionized zone.

From Pixy's perspective, it seemed like these fighters had hit an artificial wall in mid-air and collided on it. Like those shields they somehow used in these great sci-fi franchises. He had quite a high perspective, from where he had gotten up after being sure he was in the green, out of sight and out of reach of the damaged survivors.

"Where is that damned Ustian now?" The Osean leader swore, as his badly damaged plane, and barely flyable was getting out of the no-fly zone in which radio communication were useless due to the insane level of EMIs there.

"I lost it commander." Blue Monarch 4 replied, having lost not only the sight of his enemy bust most of his avionics as well, this causing him to be unable to see once more the F-15C.

"He can't be that far" added a third one, who wasn't entirely false in his assumption : the F-15C they were searching was not right under their nose, but right over their nose.

And from right over their nose, Pixy finished those last Osean pursuers, firing his classical solution to a 1-vs-4 situation : two QAAMs on the extremities of the enemy formation, and deal with the enemy center with standards and guns. This was ludicrously easy to fire at them as they did not expect such surprise attack and could not see him coming as their missile detectors were offline and were not able to run with their neutralized afterburners.

The only consolation the Osean commander had when dying from bullets that had not only shattered his left engine and set his craft ablaze but also pierced one of his lungs was that those cowards - or those men that simply had no intention to go right to their death - would be sent to hell very soon and met their maker in a few days or weeks.

Pixy had just gotten rid of a dozen Avengers. But another dozens of fighters were coming for him, Yukte Sea Fulcrums that would be a bit harder to trick than those Osean morons. However, he had already another plan ready for them. A plan that would have made his former squad leader proud of him, he knew she would have been, as he descended toward an impressive six-lane highway. First, flying at such low altitude was making the tracking harder. Furthermore, it was even harder as there was a few indicator panels fixed on metallic horizontal poles, hanging between pylons from each side of the highway. Pixy did not hesitate to fly beneath those obstacles, but most of his hunters did hesitate. One or two tried to follow him, but were imprecise when they leveled after diving below the metallic structures, and thus ended up exploding on the highway, the small but bright orange light contrasting with the blue artificial northern lights of the ionosphere. And these panels showed to be a disturbance to the radars of those Yukte Fulcrums, as they tend to lock their standard missiles on these instead of on the F-15C skimming at only a few feet above the ground.

But this wasn't his final plan for them. The final plan was involving what was written in the last warning panel "1.500 Kilometer lang Überbauungen" (1.500-kilometer-long cut and cover section). Such underground structure was wide enough for a fighter to fly through, he knew it, as he had once some training to use such structures as base in case of emergency. Besides, this one was not bearing any turns, and surely no blast doors. Thus, he flew at high speed inside of it, sure that they would follow him, but maybe at a slower pace.

And they had good reason to follow him through this tunnel, because a plasma curtain just appeared over the highway, tilting toward them. So, most of them chose to listen to their commander when he issued the order in a stern voice:

"All aircraft, follow him in the tunnel. Half on each side so we will trap him a crossfire once we're out of it!"

"That's a bit risky." A Yukte expressed some concerns but stayed on his trajectory toward the tunnel.

"Always less risky than flying straight in a plasma curtain." Another added, mocking a bit the useless maneuver of the Osean a bit sooner.

"Besides, we're an elite aggressor unit. Challenge are our thing, right commander?" A third pondered their chances at flying through this tunnel and judged that they were pretty high. If, of course, nothing unexpected added itself to his previsions. He wished no such thing happened as he entered the tunnel.

By that time, Pixy was already half-way through the tunnel. At this precise moment, he had to bank hard to avoid some truck that had been parked there. For an instant, he thought he would hit the ceiling at high speed, and that would certainly have not been a happy ending. Now he was understanding why Iskanda was such a nerve-wreck when he arrived at Directus. Flying through that kind of thing was quite tiring for the mind. It required constant attention, and a single distraction could end your career instantaneously. Of course, the constant beeping of the "pull up" alarm did not help either.

But what helped him was this very obstacle that had greatly bothered him a few instants earlier. He had not the time to see what the cargo of the truck was, but he was sure it was not a cylinder truck. For him, it looked more like the LKWs the Belkan army would use for logistics and weapon transport.

And the help was these stored weapons onboard detonating, activated by a two-time pressure sensor he activated when cruising in the tunnel near the LKW. As such, a dozen second later, as the Yukte had also to bank hard to avoid a collision with the very truck, they were all blasted on the walls of the tunnels, crushing themselves on the hard ferroconcrete voussoirs. None of the attackers coming from the same side than Pixy would survive such fate.

Inside the left tunnel, the Yukte felt the shockwave too, but here only a few of them met their end against the voussoirs. But as they had to avoid their fallen comrades or the blast of their death, they lose some time. Quite a lot of time to be honest, while Pixy which had gone through this tunnel at transonic speed was already out of it, and circling around the end, trying to see inside if the Yukte were approaching.

Sometimes life is like this dark tunnel they were advancing in. They could not see the light at the end, but they hoped to find a better place as they kept their forward motion. Yet, the darkness had fooled them, had made them slow and hesitant, and they would pay the price of their lack of will.

And as the Yuktes, all exhausted they were due to how hard it was to do inside flight for standard pilots and not for crazy mercs with matricidal thoughts, thought they could allow themselves a bit of relief as they saw the end of the tunnel, they were met by four missiles, two pair of standards that Pixy managed to launch while staying aligned with the tunnel exit, with his airbrake fully extended and at the verge of stalling to his death, but it was crowned with success.

This time, the few Fulcrums that had survived the shockwaves were unable to go around, as they were flying in pairs inside the tunnel. If they had flew in a single line, they might have gotten a chance. But here they did not, and as the first met their death on the hardened voussoirs, the others were met by others pairs that Pixy kept firing inside of the tunnel. The fact that they were not locked did not account for much, as they forced the Yuktes on the walls quite easily.

Only one Fulcrum survived, only to be gunned down from above by Pixy, tearing off his tail by a long gun burst, and making the out of control jet impact one those highway panels, shattering in a thousand pieces on the hard metallic structure.

"That was definitively too risky for my taste." Pixy said to himself, as he was still trying to escape this overcrowded airspace. Iskanda would have surely tried to stay, and said that it was only a environment with target-richness above the usual, but he wasn't flying a crazy prototype, and had only less than a third of his total ammo.

"Follow him close, Rapira (Rapier) squad. If we stay close, they won't be able to use their Wunderwaffen." The Yukte leading the squadron of Sea Flankers analyzed, considering their previous losses against these deadly technological marvels.

"Good Idea. I'm going with Rapira 5." Rapira 4 transmitted, as he was pushing the engines of his Su-33 to its maximum thrust. They had a two-tone light grey camo along with blood-red streaks on the cutting edge of their wings, with white radome and wingtips, an elegant one. Their emblem was a bit less elegant, being a rapier embedded in a bird of prey, with small sparks of blood.

Pixy knew that if he overused his afterburners, he would be bingo fuel before the clock hit ten. He had no interest in running, to be honest. Much in letting them get closer and use his superior mobility. Both Su-33 and F-15C were good compromise between mobility and stability, he could agree with that, but the first had to be less flexible due to carrier-compatibility, while the latter had been intended as a cutting-edge dogfighter from the start.

Soon, the Yukte had the relief to see the F-15C in their scopes and were able to shoot a few XMAAs at the defenseless fighter. However, none of them reach their target, as Pixy pitched a bit his aircraft, before entering in an artificially created spin. One in which he had enough control on his plane to keep evading more volleys while in the spin. Besides, the XMAA had great trouble to lock properly on the fighter due to the high level of EMIs everywhere in the vicinity, and not only in the ionized no-fly zones.

"Get closer. Go in gun range." Their commanding officer ordered, and the two Su-33s went in full afterburners, while the four others were remaining a bit further, but know at XMAA range too.

"I'm almost getting in range." Rapira 5 indicated, as he was less than a kilometer away from the enemy fighter. But both fighter pilots knew that against such an agile fighter and a well-trained pilot their effective gun range would be below five hundred meters, and even at this distance they might not hit the Eagle.

"Come, my little Kameraden." Pixy threw some invective at the Yuktes, while beginning to extend his airbrake. But that was not visible for his pursuers, even when they began firing at him from four hundred meters. Yet they lacked the precision to achieve decisive hits.

"Almost there…" Rapira 4 said as he was only two hundred meters away from the rogue Ustian.

"Just a bit more." Rapira 5 added, as he was getting below the two hundred meters of range. But by then he could have seen the airbrake that was slightly extended, but he was not focused on such details. They intended to overwhelm the F-15C with fire, not to be refined in their approach, unlike their squadron name could have let their enemy to think.

"Now we're following him close." Rapira 4 stated, as they were almost getting right behind the F-15C. That was when he saw the airbrake fully extended, and too late to do anything. Hundred meters was a distance covered in less time that saying it with supersonic fighters.

A few seconds later, they were leveled with Pixy on a horizontal line, yet unable to fire since they had no plane with wide radius of fire. Obviously, this caused their commander to yell at them in exasperation:

"Not that close, debils!"

As such, when Pixy hit the brakes, and tilted his fighter, they flew harmlessly in front of him, while he flew through his pursuers, almost flying backward from their point of view. Still, this quick decrease of speed caused his plane to oscillate a bit on his roll and pitch axis, but as he gunned them while oscillating, he gunned them all over. The two of them exploded as they were trying to turn away from Pixy's line of fire.

Then Pixy decided to charge them head on, having to twist his plane like a madman to evade their volleys of XMAAs and standards. He had no more QAAM, so he could not take them all in one round. He was a bit below then on his final approach, and quickly tilted his airplane to dive faster and evade their gunfire, but in doing so he got a solid tone on the two at the left of the four plane formation. Both were severely damaged by his missiles that exploded close to their air intakes, and thus, were unable to evade his gunfire when he zoomed in back from his dive, and exploded them sky high, before executing an horizontal loop toward the two last survivor of the Rapira squad.

Yet, amongst the two were the commanding officer, and he had no intent to let a single merc end him. He let Pixy closed in to achieve some gun kills, but then masterfully executed a Cobra. This left Pixy a bit unphased, as he had not anticipated that, and thus received a bit of gunfire on his exhaust. His afterburners would not hold for long. He only needed one push of thrust and one idea to kill the two last Yuktes. He got the idea as he had to dive to evade a pair of standard missiles. But an idea that were not supposed to let his plane unscathed, he knew it. But this idea would have surely earned him the praise of his former and now gone commanding officer, and moreover his squad leader.

"Can't you just die ?!" The other Yukte pilot furiously shouted, being a bit further and having just fired two XMAAs that Pixy countered by resuming his dive, and suddenly inverting his plane which increased his negative climb rate.

"I won't. There's only one rule in war: to survive." Pixy replied, well convinced to follow this rule to the end, despite all odds he would survive.

The lead Su-33 began to dive too, following the mercs. He was expecting him to try to climb back, and then he would finally destroy his afterburners and suppress his chance of escaping his wrath. But what Pixy did was almost the opposite. Well, the opposite in matter of vector to be precise, as Pixy when completely the other way, performing some kind of head-to-tail maneuver between the Herbert Manöver and the Himmelman.

Yet, it was far more painful for both him and his plane than it was for Iskanda when she was doing this crazy maneuver onboard her far more mobile X-29A. For his plane, the mechanical stress was too much for his airbrake that was ripped off and the damaged part ricochet on his right rudder, and further damaged his right afterburner chamber. For him, it caused a few seconds of redsight, in which he try to fly straight toward the Yukte, if he remembered correctly where his plane was and was going to be, as he wasn't seeing anything but red in his field of sight. Furthermore, just extending his finger to the trigger seemed a hard task, as the G-forces were taking their toll on him. He even fired two missiles without locking them, on a hunch.

It was a good hunch, because one of them penetrated inside the duct of the enemy Sea Flanker, and thus exploded him. Still, Pixy had heard a few bullets passing by his fighter, and as the Yukte was above him in their joust, he was mostly hit on the back of his craft, suffering additional damage on his engines.

"I swear I'll kill you ! Suk* Blyat" The Yukte swore, as he closed head-on the distance with the F-15C that had decimated his whole squadron. But once again, his fire was for trash, as the Belkan merc taunted him for his inabilities:

"Swearing is unpolite. Besides, what do you know of my mother, useless and aimless pilot?" Pixy said with a voice filled with righteous indignation, even if the three last word were only filled with disdain more than anything.

Still, the Yukte managed to escape his fire head-on too, but he won't escape when he would come back, using the last push of his afterburners, whose associated light had turned red on his screen. Furthermore, it was quite hard to have a good trajectory and turn well on the Yukte without his airbrake, but he managed to slow his aircraft down by pitching a bit, not enough to stall, but enough to bleed his own speed. And after a few more seconds and a few less rounds in his ammo, the Yukte's plane exploded in a ball of fire and fell to the ground.

Pixy was now out of harm, as the F-14Ds and F/A-18Cs were too slow to even hope to catch him, and their standard XLAAs and SAAMs were fairly slow too. Still, he was not ready to pick another one-vs-ten fight, and thus chose to rush out of the area, going back to Hoffnung. He kept flying above the highway, but when he encountered other tunnels and cut and cover section he only fly over them and not fly in, since there was no point in going in, besides freaking out for the duration of the inside flight.

Furthermore, Pixy knew he would have even more difficulties at catching up with these bombers, from one conversation between some bomber pilots he intercepted while cruising toward the city of Hope:

"Sir, they have increased the power of their Merlin satellites, and Now our fire is for trash." One pilot reported.

"Besides, we have already lost ten bombers out of fifty-three, without taking into account the B-2As." One other added, fostering the fact that they were not in the best situation right now.

"Our engines might keep working if we go through, but I fear that some other avionics would be disabled." A Third One shared his thoughts about what the A-12 just did, and with pretty deadly results against them.

"Fine. Stop releasing your cruise missiles, we gonna fly around these curtains and then drop our heavy bombs on the last defensive structure of Hoffnung, and then on their logistical convoys." Their leader agreed with a bit of bitterness, knowing that on the way they would suffer some losses. But they still had their Tomcats and Hornets flying top cover with them.

Pixy saw some of these losses from far away, the bombers being light up and turned into a big flying torch, while their destroyed escort fighters were more like distant shooting star. However, he was a bit dumbfounded to find that the convoys were their target. Because these were not for logistics, but mainly the last civilians that had left their now burning city. This only foster his resolve to catch them and kill anyone he would be able to.

Henceforth, he forced himself to fly through some tunnels to gain some time on the bombers. If he was right, the highway was going at the North, going around the mountains surrounding the valley of Hoffnung. If the bombers wanted to circle around, they would almost go the same path, but maybe twelve or fifteen kilometers above him if they wanted to use the fact of the decreasing hazardousness of the Merlins with the altitude. It would put him in a good position to perform Schräge Musik on the bombers, though he realized it would not be easy to just survive. He knew he would never be able to win alone, but that was not a good reason to stop trying.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 21:10, Weather: clear**

Henri, the radio operator on the ground was quite surprised to see only one F-35, or at least what their radar was identifying as an F-35 but could not get a precise answer on which variants it was. After all, the squadron that was scheduled to refuel now was supposed to be made of five Osean F-35C with a light grey camo with blue lightnings on their bottom.

So, he was quite surprised to say the least when he saw only one F-35 approaching the runway silently. It was odd. Those Oseans had never come here, and this pilot landed here like a charm, like if this man or woman, he could not know, own this place. This pilot had the habit of mountains wind, which Osean often lacked, as Osean Air Base were mostly close to important cities that were in flat areas or high plateau at best. Not at high altitudes when scissoring wind could cause the doom of rookies. It had happened a few times in the history of this place.

Furthermore, he was now understanding why the radar did not pick it as a F-35C. Because it was not. It possessed a X-shaped empennage, sharklets and canards. Everything about this plane was screaming that it belonged to South Belka, or that its design was influenced by their ideology, putting mobility other stealth. Such feature could be understandable, as their Merlins satellites would nullify the stealth of pretty much any aircraft. Unless Osea created optical camouflage, but he knew that was not something realistic for this era.

However, he was not the most flabbergasted by the arrival of this mysterious pilot. This envious place was reserved for Herr Steller, as he had stepped toward the plane with a few Ustian resistance fighters that had come from Directus at the same time than the Osean major. He ordered to bring a ladder for this pilot to step down, but before he could have done that, the canopy opened, and the pilot quickly stepped forward. With the Belkan-looking uniform and the helmet on her head with the oxygen mask still in place, hiding the pilot's face, he could not get a glimpse at the pilot.

Pilot who take a few steps on the wing to gain momentum, causing the plane to tilt a bit, before jumping from the plane, as if she wanted to dive in some pool.

"Wie?" He said out of blunt surprise, stepping backward to avoid being hit by this mad pilot, trying to figure who would want to jump head first into solid concrete that was three meters thick and below it was a solid granite. Definitely not something you would like to dive into.

He was ready to call for a trauma team if this pilot injured himself in this crazy dive. But no impact happened, as the person performed a perfect roll on the ground that allowed to keep her momentum rather than hitting the ground hard. As the person jumped back on her feet, he felt a tight hold on his throat, and next a stingier feeling, as a cold blade was pointing at his jugular.

A single look at the color of the blade as well as its form bearing two rows of barbs allowed him to instantaneously recognize the person who spoke the next second.

"Gib mir the Griffon!" Iskanda threatened the old mechanic, which replied with an abnormally calm voice, due to the situation.

"You know where the hangar is, Iskanda." He indicated, slightly surprising his interlocutor by the strange lack of surprise within his voice, like if he had been expecting her. They both steadily walked toward the old and rusty hangar, flanked by the two resistance members which kept their submachine guns trailed on them, but not openly pointing their gun at their heads.

Iskanda noticed only one thing as they walked toward the hangar, the lack of Oseans. Were they somewhere else, doing some dirty jobs such as that man, if she could call him a man, did with that self-propelled artillery train? Maybe. But this was not the time for her questions. Not yet.

Steller was again the first to talk, as they arrived in front of the hangar, asking to walk freely :

"It's not that I don't trust you with that harpoon of yours, but I have a rather low platelet count and I wouldn't want to bleed too much if you accidentally grazed my throat." He justified with some health issue, which was true according to his last blood exams a few weeks before.

"If they let go of their weapon." She argued, and as the two other Ustians walked in front of them, he nodded, and they nodded back, why putting their weapon near the wall of the hangar, but still keeping their handguns on their belt.

"I have a good intuition to kept it in good shape, armed and ready" Steller said, as the two Ustians were opening the door for the hangar.

"Indeed. It will serve its purpose well, at least I hope." Iskanda added, wanting to at least end this day fighting once more. And this time, she would once again fight on her own terms. With her own strategies. That worked wonders against the Hexen.

"It's not because the city of Hope is burning that all hope is lost. It might even be the contrary." Steller completed, as he has now understood the purpose of the Griffon, which was now in plain sight, its cockpit standing proudly above its massive air intake. That Perrault guy had bragged once or twice about the fact that high altitude fighter-bombers would lay waste on its remains. And the Griffon was the perfect tool to save the day, like it saved the day a few months before, against those Valkyries.

"Whatever… I just want those Osean to burn. Speaking of Oseans, where are them?" She asked as a small tractor moved across the runway, from another hangar, to carry the Griffon, as it was not very good at taxiing.

"Well, they left with your former wingman to Fato where a temporary HQ had been set." Steller explained the almost emptiness of the Air Base. What was left was empty hangar and empty barracks, and a few warehouses filled with ammo they had gotten but could not use since the Ustian Air Force was literally a one-man army.

"I see. They have tossed aside their so-called aggressive neutrality then?" She had a bit of trouble believing that the people who had sacrificed entire fighter wings to get her and the Sixth Ustian Unit were fine with Osean invading their land, using their base to refuel and moreover using their cities and their citizen as shield to prevent strikes from Excalibur.

"Honestly, I don't know how they pulled that off. Maybe Osea promised them some territories of Belka, or from Gebet and Recta that are neutral but without real government since the beginning of this war." Steller emitted a few hypotheses, feeling relieved as she didn't ask him to dwell further in why the Osean weren't there to greet her.

"Usual Osean crap. Create an ally, and then dumped them under the bus once they have no use for them." Iskanda replied, knowing from this morning that this country of traders and liars was ready to do anything to obtain supremacy.

"Yeah. These were your allies." Steller closed that subject, intentionally using the past because he had heard of her so-called betrayal from Hervin. But for him Osea were the betrayers. For this reason alone, his voice was filled with disgust as he was talking of such men. Such men that did not deserve victory. And he hoped sincerely that Iskanda would rob them of such victory now and for the battles to come.

"Speaking of allies, do you know anything about a craft named R-020?" She asked with renewed curiosity, having considered during her flight that of all people he might have an answer to this question.

"That's not an Osean plane. It's a Yukte prototype, from the same era of the Griffon. Trisonic nuclear bomber was its supposed purpose, but it never reached that speed. They preferred ICBMs to bombers, but I guess that with their ICBMs being only strikes in the water, they are forced to use such kind of planes. The Griffon should be able to handle it. Especially if they outfitted them with heavier weaponry than what they're intended to carry." Steller answered while giving a few specs about this plane, with its shape being one of a long narrow fighter, in a similar fashion with the F-104 Starfighter, however instead of the small and thin, straight, mid-mounted, trapezoidal wing that had missiles on its wingtips, the R-020 had longer and slightly thicker trapezoidal wings that had their engines on their wingtips like the SR-71. However, Yukte never seek to obtain such craft since they focused more on ICBMs than high altitude fast recon crafts, and thus never manage to create a circle-combined engine for the Tsybin, forcing those craft to use jet engines that would limit their abilities.

"I see. Their number doesn't matter. They'll just be more to die." She answered with a shit-ton of cynicism, knowing her chances of survival. Furthermore, Wunderwaffe were more or less on her side, and that was already less to worry about and hinder her capacities.

"I trust you'll keep it in one piece?" He rhetorically asked, which she only responded with a small nod. Sure, the F-35X she had landed here was pretty messed-up, but he had heard that fights above Hoffnung had been pretty grueling, so such state of damage was expected. But against Widowmaker, Oxcarts and Tsybin, he hoped she would survive. Otherwise he knew his relative would surely feel ashamed to see their flying piece of art dying in a useless battle

A few minutes, she was ready to take-off after having looked on a few maps to figure where those high-speedy boys would come from, and where she could intercept them. If they were on time, according to Steller's Intel je said to have obtained from the last briefing, she needed to go fast and right now, if she wanted to intercept those fighters before they got in range of anything above Hoffnung. Their armament would mainly be some very long-range missiles so they could bullseye from the stratosphere, so she had maybe better luck if she could get in range and use her rockets or guns.

Thus, at 21:15, the Griffon took off once more in a deafening roar, due to his unstable jet engine. A few dozen seconds later she would have gotten in supersonic and set on ramjet mode.

Henri, Steller and Hervin had watched her took off with a bit of anxiety. Could she be trusted? Sure. Could she be trusted with the victory that would change all? They could express some doubts.

"Soon, their role will change. Or to be fair, they'll assume their true role. And we'll do too." Hervin said, as the base was quiet again, while looking at some of the Ustian resistance members that were roaming around another rusted hangar.

 **Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 21:45, Weather: little bit of rain**

His F-15C had come up the highway quickly enough to catch up with those bombers. On the way he saw multiples B-52 being blown up sky high, but no small explosions. Apparently, their escort fighters were agile enough to evade the Helligen Kolumne. And some of their bombers might be, or at least some pilots were smarter than others, because Pixy did not see that many explosions. Maybe a dozen. Still, pulling these evasives was slowing them down, and to a great extent.

Now, he had successfully caught up with them and was climbing from behind them, trying to find the best position to perform Schräge Musik. Even if he had only enough ammo to take half of these bombers, he was fairly convinced to make every bullet count. Even if he had trouble tailing them with his afterburners in a dire state, he would follow them. Durch Himmel und Hölle (through heaven and hell), if it was necessary.

Right now, he was climbing below a bomber at the extremity of the formation that was only thirty aircraft strong, willing to do the same to this line of bomber than what he did to the B-2s. Even if B-52s could withstand much more punishment than Spirits.

Still, the Concerto of Schräge Musik would begin. He did not switch on his radar, so no passive detectors could reveal his presence. Of course, he did not need it, with the B-52s being such massive targets. Missing one of those, even without locking on, would be like missing an elephant in a corridor.

And so, this bomber fell, after a precise gun burst exploded his center right engine, and with two unguided missiles aimed at the wing-root fillet succeeding in ripping off his right wing. Pixy had just made another Solo Wing, but he doubt that such a massive airplane could remain stable with a wing less.

But their crew had enough time to report what they saw as the Ustian fighter flew by them, avoiding the falling craft and leveling at the bottom left of the Line of bomber.

"A F-15C just hit us. Bomber in distress."

"I confirm. Escort, hurry up!" Another bomber pilot added, being quite imperative in his demand of escort. He knew they had no defenses but flares. For a moment he was envious of the Belkan bomber crew that had at least their rear cannon to protect them.

"Skeleton 1 here, I have him on my radar. ETA three minutes." The Osean leader of the F-14D escort squad announced. Their planes had a dark grey two-tone camo, with skeletal talons on their wingtips

"Can't you go any faster? We are getting chewed up here!" A Bomber pilot complained, as he saw another B-52 getting down. He had managed to fool Pixy's missile with his flares, and the Ustian flew over him after gunning his engines a bit. The Osean pilot felt some relief as he saw the Ustian going straight ahead, away from his craft. But it was only to perform a Split-S and gun the canopy from the front, and launch two missile in succession, with the first blasting a massive gap and the second detonating inside the bomber that was shattered in a thousand metallic pieces.

"We can't. Servos of our swing-wings were damaged as we got out the way of an Helligen Kolumne, and as such they are blocked in an open position." The WSO of Skeleton 1 answered to the bomber pilot, desperately trying to reboot the small motors that were dead by now. Now they were forced to go at low speed, or they would all end up in spins of death.

"I didn't think that was possible." Pixy smirked, given how laughable their situation was. He had the time to down a few more bombers before the arrival of their escort.

Another bomber managed to lose one missile by banking quite hard while releasing a cloud of flares, but by doing so the B-52 was tilted in a way that put the center of the craft right in Pixy's crosshairs. Two more unguided missiles later and the Stratofortress was falling, split in half.

"Damn, this escort is useless." A bomber pilot ranted, as he saw the Ustian rogue gunning another of his squadmates while yawing a bit, setting all his engines on fire.

"It's not our fault that all of Hornets died to Excalibur." Skeleton 3 countered, as the six damaged F-14D were trying to go as fast as their now fixed wing could allow.

"We have been punctured. Losing pressure and thrust." A very damaged B-52 said in a laconic voice, as most pf the crew was now dead, and himself died a few minutes later when the fall would end up on the ground.

"Damnit. Another one just bites the dust." The Osean in charge of the bomber squad could only see the spot disappear on his radar. Two more spots disappeared after Pixy heavily damaged their tail sections and ailerons. They could still fly, but not evade the Helligen Kolumne that grew right in front of them.

"ETA one minute. Just hang in there." Skeleton 1 indicated, as their radar was now tracking very well the F-15C, but they doubted of the accuracy of their XLAAs in such an environment.

"Hang into what?" A bomber pilot asked, as gunfire grazed his canopy, wrecking his engine, before a pair of missiles was locked onto the burning engine. The strength of the explosion was enough to blow up the engines and the wing above them.

"Hang into your stupid hopes. And burn with them." Pixy harshly replied, as he attacked a pair of bombers that were flying pretty close. Knowing that they would surely use their flares if he fired missiles, he chose to gun the first from the side, aiming for where the bomb bay was. He did not expect the bay to open after a few gun bursts, but he took the opportunity, nevertheless. He did a quick dive, before climbing right below him and fired a single missile into the hole, which was enough to trigger some internal chain-reaction that turned the bomber in a flying torch.

Pixy barrel-rolled out of the way, before resuming his climb. He had taken one line of bomber, or almost. Only one was remaining and had suffered a bit of damage when the burning B-52 blew up and sent flying overheated debris everywhere. As he approached an altitude high enough to dive on this last bomber, he leveled for a few seconds, looking at the approaching Tomcats. Another thing he took the time to look at was the blueish light of the Helligen Kolumne that were now creating lightings here and there, sending lethal discharge to the bombers and the few transports they had at the front. For a glimpse he thought having seen some burning chutes of airborne troopers, but it was time to finish this bomber then.

"Escort, do something. DO SOMETHING FOR GOD'S SAKE!" The pilot bellowed as he saw the Ustian fighter diving on him at high speed. He tried to turn out of the way of his missiles, but his damaged wings prevented him from doing this evasive successfully, and thus the B-52 was split in half

"We're all going to Hell today. Stop praying and act." Pixy challenged the damaged F-14Ds who were approaching head-on, flying recklessly head-on despite his own damage. But if he could still master the flight of his F-15C without airbrakes and with badly damaged afterburners, these new foes would have a very bad day with their wings locked in an open position.

"You're going first, traitor!" Skeleton 3 shouted with hatred filling his voice, as he was firing a XLAA on the lone Eagle, followed by all his squadmates.

But all were avoided when Pixy suddenly dived and entered a violent spin, that make him fall toward the ground at high speed. He saw XLAA grazing me, losing his track by a few meters. Hopefully, he would not be against anyone bearing ERAAMs this evening. Or he would be dead. In his fall, he was a bit less conscious as the G-forces were taking his tall on him, but he was satisfied enough to hear the Osean ranting about their shots being fired for trash. After all, they were trash.

His next step was a bridge with had once bore some structure that was now wrecked and with some black fumes pouring from it. As he got closer, he recognized it as a RTLS. That must have wreaked havoc amongst the allied forces sooner in the morning, but now it was just a symbol of Belkan pride still standing in face of defeat. At least the massive structure that was still partially burning fooled the XLAAs, and Pixy was able to climb back after the bridge with no more missile locked on him. Besides, he had only six F-14D to battle here. And what is more, six damaged one.

His strategy would be simple. First, he flew right in front of them after his climb. They tried to fire at him, but he make sure of avoiding their fire by tilting his aircraft more than safety would demand, and thus swaying from side to side, out of their firing arcs, as their mobility was greatly hindered but not his. Then he fired a missiles on the extended wings of the F-14Ds at the right of the formation, before gunning the one at the far left, snapping his wing, while mocking them for not being able to achieve what he once did :

"Having trouble flying with one wing ? pathetic."

"Your end will be pathetic, I can ensure that!" Their leader barked at him, despite his powerlessness against this much more determined enemy, a few seconds before the F-15C crossed their first line of fighters, which had been greatly depleted, with three falling out of control to their death.

His second assault on their second line was even easier. They did try to fire some XLAAs, but they had poor mobility when fired at close range, and so avoiding them through a small dive was a simple formality for Pixy. They managed to avoid him as he zoomed in on them, but they did that by banking hard, and thus were still stalling when he descended back on them, and terminated then by firing his gun on their cockpits, killing mercilessly the four men inside.

"Your end is close, Solo Wing." Their now lone leader tried to appear threatening, but failed to do so, even if his voice was filled with exasperation caused by his powerlessness. After all, the F-14 would be always powerless against his Eagle for Pixy, with the exception of these F-14W Schnee had in B7R.

"Yours is near. And far more pathetic." The Belkan mercenary replied, having carefully thought his last maneuver against this Osean. He would not need to fire a missile to end this damaged F-14D. Just a simple use of the laws of aerodynamics. That would surely have made Herr Thesermeister proud, who reported having scored a skill in this manner.

Again, the Tomcat tried to engage, but his fire was avoided by the more mobile Eagle. None of his fire hurt the enemy plane or the enemy pilot. And to be fair, nothing hurt his Tomcat either. Pixy had not fired a single missile, and still the Tomcat was going down after their joust.

What Pixy did was flew very close to him as their crossed each other's, flying a few decimeters above the extended wing. But as he flew, over, he pitched a bit, making the thrust of his engine act like a gigantic fan that caused a nice boundary layer separation. This precious layer that was more or less creating the lift on the wing of the F-14D was dispersed in a split second by the powerful twin engines of his F-15C. Instantaneously, the Tomcat stalled hard, and fell to the ground, spinning out of control.

Having gotten rid of all his nearest enemies, he entered the city airspace, ready to take down any new opponent, would they be dishonorable allied forces or foolish Ralders.

 **So, I decided to cut this long battle here, between two skirmishes that are almost independent, to make these final chapter of the Hoffnung arc. Here we had some more betrayal, but I believe that such actions were expected, if we follow the last chapter.**

 **Feel free to comment, subscribe, follow.**

 **Und bis nächst Seite, Lesern und Leserinnen.**


	27. Chapter 124: Operation Cannibal 2 part2

**Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 21:50, Weather: heavy thunder**

Now the weather had followed once more Pixy's state of mind, going from threatening to openly deadly. From the dark black clouds, only lighted by these far away artificial northern lights and the raging fire from the ground, lightnings were striking at the few high buildings of Hoffnung that had not yet being burned to the ground. But what struck Pixy was not the frequency of those lightnings but their color. Usually lightnings were white. He had seen these weird blueish colors associated with the Helligen Kolumne, but seeing red lightings was giving a more hellish taste to even the air, while the soil seemed to be nothing but flames burning everything in sight in the valley.

He was now going back toward the Stratofortress when he got a call from one the last person he expected to hear today. Even if he had already heard his voice, but he was not sure. Besides, if it was him, what was his purpose here? Surely some piece of a plan that was far beyond his understanding, whether he was part of it or not.

"Solo Wing, we need your help. The Dunkle squadron had neutralized our Lichtswirbel TFLS tank. A second attack would be fatal to the Bienenstock." Oswin asked, his demand being more of a desperate one that did not match the image Pixy had of his well-tempered and serene base commander. In his voice, like in any people on those skies or on the ground subjected to this utter chaos, chaos could be felt. Almost distress.

"I'm coming." Pixy executed his former commander's order without hesitating a single instant. The Dunkle squad was made of 12 Gripen Cs with dark camo and a blood red line on their wing tips and rudder and was known to be an efficient group for both long-range sea strikes and ground strikes, operating from Anfang. Their usual formation would be half bearing SODs and half bearing XLAAs, that Osea had copied for their new A-12 Avengers.

In only a few dozen seconds, he flew over the western limits of the valley, flying toward the smaller valley in which the Bienenstock base was located. It took him such little time because the direction he was heading was not that far from the base, as he was once more heading to deal with the last of the Stratofortress. Even if he did not know if these were the last of today. Maybe there was a second wave a bit further that he had not seen.

When he arrived, he found once more utter chaos. Most of the warehouses of the base had been burned down or gutted by the doing of Dunkle squads, or previous attackers which for some were laying on the ground, shattered by laserfire when the Lichtswirbel were still active, or filled with Belkan lead for the following attackers. The runway looked like a picture taken from the moon, for there was so many craters on it. Even a harrier would have a hard time landing there with the state of the runway. There was still a bunch of conventional AA guns firing their tracers into the night, trailing the Gripen C close, even with their dark camo they could fool the accuracy of the CSB gunners operating those. Pixy did saw a few Gripen down or fleeing, spewing orange flames instead of the more indigo color of afterburners. For now, there was only four Gripen Cs in each configuration.

Pixy did notice some static tanks that did not move from time to time to repositioned themselves. These did not look like current AA-guns but more like the old Wirbelwind AA guns, but scaled up a bit, yet nowhere near the gigantic Maus and E-100. Hence the name Lichtswirbel, he said to himself, as he was approaching the Bienenstock Base.

"We only need some aerial cover while we bring the emergency power cells to the Lichtswirbel." His former commander explained from the armored walls of the control tower; whose windows had already been shattered by nearby gunfire and small explosions. He had already wounded and deaths to count, but if he could reduce that number from growing, it would be nice.

"I see. Target sighted!" He acknowledged, setting his sights on a Gripen bearing SODs stirred toward one of the inactive laser tanks.

"Beware, Dunkle fünf, he's coming for you!" Dunkle drei warned his wingmate, trying to fire some XLAA do deter the Belkan merc, but they were easily avoided, and the salvo shot for trash.

"I'm ready to evade anything." Dunkle fünf answered, confident in his and his craft's abilities. Besides, this Eagle was heavily damaged, he saw that as he had not seen using his afterburners to get here.

"Galm 2, Fox 2" Pixy announced, firing one missile at his foes, only for this one to evade by pitching high. But his almost telegraphed attack was only but a trick. A trick that the North Belkan did not see coming, as he was bragging about this temporary success.

"You see? I can handle a traitor."

"And even some traitorous ground forces." He inflated his ego as he was now in range of a currently deactivated Lichtswirbel. He slowly locked it with his SODs and fired. But he was not the only one to fire at this moment.

"Too low, Solo Wing." Dunkle zwei commented the fire from Pixy, as he seemingly missed the Gripen one more time. But he was not firing at the Gripen in the first time. Thus, from the two aircraft firing at this very moment, only his was a success.

And his success was of immediate effect. His well-aimed missile, fired without locking-on had struck one of the SOD the Gripen had just released, setting off a chain reaction that blew up the second SOD and the aircraft that was coming behind with the intent of watching the damage he would create from up close.

"Schöne Trickschuss (nice trickshot)." Oswin commented, as his men were carefully moving the specific emergency generator they had to rely. Those were desperate measures, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Because what they were moving to resupply those tactical laser systems were nuclear generators, that had been experimented a few years ago on probes made for the deep solar systems, were solar panels tend to be inefficient due to the distance.

"Danke. Aber es ist nur der Anfang des Ends für diese Anfänger (thanks, but it's only the beginning of the end for these beginners)." Pixy mocked his current opponents, using the word describing both beginners and the inhabitants of Anfang, where this squadron was based.

And indeed, it was only the first of his trickshots for tonight. The second, it was a bit riskier than the first. He saw another of those SOD bearing Gripen heading for his target, ready to strike. He did not go for his sixes this time. But for his twelve and inverted his plane. A pair of missiles grazed his plane he had quite some trouble maintaining stable in this position at low altitude, but he managed to evade them by climbing a bit -or diving as he was still inverted-. However, his salvo struck, his missiles being slightly quicker when fired inverted.

"Damn, this merc is the devil." Another Gripen pilot said, as he saw just two very precise shots that for him would have been impossible to pull out.

"Then cling on to some angel cuz' devil's coming!" Pixy replied with some harshness in his voice, seeing honorable squadrons that usually only took part in destroying armed forces in enemy territory before they could be deployed, thus they often begin with taking out runways, which they did here.

Pixy rushed on this next victim, but he was a bit too fast. He knew that without his airbrakes he would not have the time to reposition himself in his sixes. So, he only attacked from his three hours. A long gun burst set out his unique engine in flames, as both crossed each other path, but with only Pixy scoring hits. A few seconds later fire from a nearby AA guns achieved the badly damaged Gripen C.

Now there was only one enemy threatening the most their ground-based laser systems. But the four others were still as dangerous for the small AA guns and for the fighter covering them, which was not in a win-win situation. More in a very harmful one, as the Gripen C were firing their XLAAs from time to time, and as Pixy had great trouble avoiding those with his reduced speed.

However, at one point he saw the last SOD-equipped Gripen C mounting an attack, but with two other Gripen C about to cross the path of their wingmen as Pixy engaged him. He successfully evaded their XLAAs by a streak of sharp turns, and their standard missiles through a short spin that brought him pretty close to the ground, but he manage to recover quickly, and as he climbed to their altitude, shot one down one with a pair of missiles and the other with a gun burst that went right through his air intakes.

But as he was enjoying his short success, he realized that he would not have the time to get in position to fire at the attacking Gripen C properly. So, he rushed at the top of his currently limited speed, ready to use his craft to protect those Lichtswirbel tanks.

So, instead of trying to attack the enemy Gripen, he flew right below him, before climbing right in front of him, breaking his angle of attack.

"Was?" Was the sudden reaction of the Belkan, as he had to pitch hard to avoid the collision with this foolish pilot.

But the surprise vanished quite quickly from the mind of the Belkan pilot, as he pitch even harder to align his gun on the F-15C. He did fire two missiles, but they were not locked and thus were shot for trash. Still, Pixy felt his aircraft vibrating a lot as he was hit by gunfire, before a red message appeared on his HUD "Gefahr. Links Reaktor Überdruck."

Thus, Pixy had to shut his left engine off, or he would blow up in a very near future. Instantaneously, he fell, the thrust from only one engine being not enough to lift his fighter in the air. In his fall, he saw the Gripen was not in a better situation. Maybe in a worse. He had the advantage of falling from some altitude, so he could always glide a bit much than the Gripen. Besides, Pixy was not the one stalling right above AA guns that were just threatened the second before his stunt. And so, he shared this kill with the AA guns operators

"Hanging there, Pixy! The emergency power supplies are almost online." His former based commander tried to foster his former student's will, as he was seeing the badly damaged F-15C having great trouble maintaining a stable fight.

"I would almost prefer having one wing but two engines." The latter commented his current state. Solo Wing was better than Solo Jet anyway. He knew that if he made it out of this battle, if he survived this hell of a battle, he might need to change his aircraft. F-15s were known for their reliability and resilience, but he might have reached and gone over his aircraft's.

And fifteen second later, the last two Gripen in flying state had positioned themselves for what they supposed to be a perfect shot of their XLAAs on this rogue merc that dishonored the fatherland in their eyes. Two volleys of XLAAs left their pylons to murder a single craft, almost an overkill, but given how many Osean, Yukte and North Belkan this man had killed today, it almost seemed a fair trial for the two last members of Dunkle squad.

Yet, five second before they fired their missiles, the technicians in charge of carrying the slightly hazardous emergency nuclear fuel cell for the Lichtswirbel had made it to the advanced anti-aircraft weaponry, and linked them to the tank power line, once inside of it. It was not a complex task, just put a cylinder into some cylindrical hole, and then lock the system with a simple rotation to prevent any radioactive leaks, even if it was the last of the concern of the operators. Radioactivity would kill far slower than those Gripens and the others planes that the now allied North Belkan and Osean forces would very likely send in a very near future.

Thus, only four seconds after the XLAAs were dropped from their pylons and began skimming toward the F-15C whose pilot was readying himself to do evasive maneuvers, the XLAAs blow up in mid-air, and then the Gripen pilots saw their wing, cell and overall fuselage being ripped apart from laser fire, which only lasted a split second before they blew up, hit in critical components.

"Damn, I'm happy to be with the guys who have Wunderwaffen today." Pixy said as he saw the missiles heading for him as well as the Gripens being blown sky high.

"I won't say that we are the good or the bad guys. Just those doing what's necessary to win." Oswin added, allowing himself to feel some relief as the short range radar wasn't showing any hostile, while on the medium range radar there was less and less B-52s above the airspace, with one disappearing every fifteen second, with both the fire from Excalibur and the Lichtswirbel obliterating the heavy yet slow bombers.

"Why are you still here? Wasn't Hoffnung supposed to be evacuated?" Pixy asked, a bit puzzled about the goal of staying here while the entire city was already nothing more than a sea of flames with nothing left to defend or conquer.

"The operators at Tauberg are in need of our radars here. With the thunderstorm caused by the fire, their satellite become less precise." Oswin agreed on the fact that he was only a mere scout in this whole operation. A bit more than a pawn, but not more.

"I see. I'll keep flying a bit around here then." Pixy decided to stay here until the end if he could even live to see its end. But these Lichtswirbel had shown some weakness compared to the RTLS that had more turrets and these were more widespread on the railway vehicle, unlike on those tanks where they were concentrated on one turret and thus more vulnerable to single aircrafts.

 **Bienenstock Base, Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 21:55, Weather: heavy thunder**

But a few kilometers North of his position, a few F-15E with ultramarine blue wing and rudders as well as white wingtips and rudder tips were approaching the area, and with obvious intent toward the Bienenstock Base. The ones armed with sub-munitions had already raised their altitude, hoping that they would have more success against these new laser tanks and their meager escort of one single aircraft that the eight bearing SAAMs would have to deal with.

For these pilots bearing an emblem made of a blue falcon in flight with bloodstained talons in circles of white, black and yellow, this fight might bring them some memories. And why? Because they were none others than the former colleagues of Pixy when he graduated, that had been incorporated in a single squadrons as the squadrons they were part of suffered losses in the last weeks of combat against the CSB and the allied forces, with the first inflicting more damage right now on the North Belkan forces than the later. After all, they had a common enemy for now. Of course, those Belkans weren't less eager to engage any Oseans if they had one in sight, but they were not going to let go of this chance to enact revenge on this pilot that had always dominated the Belkan DACT of their class.

Still, they might have tried to be discreet by shutting down their afterburners a few kilometers before their arrival and as such could only watch from afar their former brother-in-arms dealing with the Dunkle squad. However, even before they had the time to release any SFFSs, two fighters exploded in mid-air.

"F-15Es detected. A lot of them." A Lichtswirbel operator reported, as they were trying to focus their fire on the ones bearing specific air to ground ammunition. Their armor allowed them to take a few hits from missiles and guns, as long as it wasn't from the gun of a A-10 Warthog and LAGMs.

"I agree. And they are targeting me too." Pixy said, as his missile alert was ringing due to the high numbers of SAAMs incoming.

"Here we are. You were supposed to become a test pilot, Larry. Not a traitorous mercenary." Blau Falke accused of blatant disloyalty against the fatherland his former comrade, as he was firing a SAAM.

"At least I didn't choose a Balder, Herr Jaschah "Sternchen"." Pixy roughly replied to this Yukte-originated pilot that only rose through the ranks through politics and not through skills, something that hardened pilot like him. Furthermore, he never understood why fighter pilots wanted to choose a F-15E over an F-15C. Sure, it was a bit more modern, but if they truly wanted some modern stuff they would have gone for a F-15S/MTD. But maybe F-15S/MTDs, as well as many prototypes planes, were only produced at Hoffnung as much prototypes had ties with the Pendragon Projekt, more or less, and thus this deprived the North of high-tier fighters.

"Klappe zu and Stirb, Ustian Knecht (Shut up and die, Ustian servant) !" The enemy pilot let his anger express in a more literal form, and his WSO released one more SAAM on the F-15C.

"Nein, du bist der Knecht der Radler. Und wie alle du wirst versagen. (No, you are the servant of the Ralder. And like all of them you'll fail)" Pixy evaded their missiles, jousting both with his words and his planes against this Ralder Regiment, zigzagging over the small mountains that surrounded the valley of Hoffnung. This was no easy task for him, as each turn was making the whole hull vibrating, as the slightest of displacement was resulting in huge unbalance for the now single-engine F-15C.

He entered in five uncontrolled spins as he got closer to the Blau Falke squad, with each getting him closer to the ground, as he managed to level right on time after evading volleys of SAAMs. His only relief as he was getting closer to his enemies was the sight of exploding F-15Es, as their hull was peeled off by laserfire from the Lichtswirbel until their fuel imploded from overheating.

"One by one, we'll get them!" A somewhat happy laser operator exulted, as the semi-automated canon was shredding a F-15E into a cloud of metallic dust.

But their mutual relief that had only lasted less than a half-minute had to come to an end, as Pixy was now in range of standard missiles for the eight SAAMs-equipped F-15Es, while the four remaining F-15E with submunitions having accelerated greatly unlike the ones hunting Pixy. Those did not need accuracy with their weaponry, and the fragmentation was rendering close interception almost impossible for the Lichtswirbel laser weaponry. And as Pixy was climbing to engage his ex-comrades, he had the displeasure to see a blue dot disappearing from his radar. Besides, he only had ten missiles remaining and a bit more than a hundred rounds. Again, he would have to make every shot count.

The first four ones facing him were Jaschah and three other pilots. He could understand a bit of their resentment toward him back then, as he was the best of the class and thus could integrate the Kellerman group the next year and have the pleasure to fight alongside him abroad while they would get boring flight patrol over the arctic sea. Even if this choice had only been determined by his skills, and nothing more.

"Feuer an diesen Verrat!" His nemesis shouted as his three wingmen, but this is where their choice of Balders above the F-15Cs revealed to be a bad choice, definitively.

"Probiert weiter, RRs (Rald-Regiment)!" Pixy returned verbally, returning fire as he avoided their standard missiles and SAAMs they tried to use at short-range. However, using fox-1s at close-range against an aircraft oscillating on all three axes was not a good idea. Still, Pixy suffered too from this instability, as only the first missile he launched had a solid tone, with the second missing the frontal lock-on and vanishing in the night. His gunfire was more successful, as with his aircraft Gebet-rolling (Dutch-rolling) he had a more widespread cone of fire on Blau Falke vier.

So, he saw one fighter exploding behind him after he crossed their line, and another being greatly damaged, as his missile had blown a big portion of his right wingtips, and projected shrapnels in all of the control surfaces and right engine, putting him in a similar state of damage than his fighter currently was. He saw another thing as he was approaching the second wave of hunters, seeing as he rotated his head backward the SFFS-equipped F-15Es being surrounded by explosions. But those explosions were not FLAK explosive shells, but their own hull being sublimated and reducing their craft to flying wreckages.

Three of those detonated in very short succession, but they had obtained what they were looking for : they traded their lives for the Lichtswirbel, and as there was more than two crewmembers inside of it, the victim-to-death ratio was almost in favor of North Belka.

The last member of this fighter-bomber team was now retreating with a heavily wounded WSO and his back canopy blown into pieces, and with the back of the plane having maybe loss a third of the external plating and his rudder pierced like Ustian cheese. All had happened as the pilot enacted a very large turn to perform a second bombing run, but while doing this, as he tilted a bit too much his aircraft to turn faster, he showed his upper side to the last Lichtswirbel, who didn't hesitate to fire. If the WSO survived with only third degree burn it would be only through sheer luck.

Now, Pixy was climbing in quite a dangerous manner, hoping to arrive below the second wave. Thus, he was climbing after having banked hard, and so was now tilted, almost like he was following some surface that would have been set between the two F-15E at the right of their four-plane formation. The major advantage was that in this situation, he was presenting the less visible side of his plane, for both the second wave and the three survivors of the first wave that had enacted U-turns to avoid flying above the Bienenstock and its powerful anti-aircraft defenses. The bright lights coming from the ionosphere or the closer flames were quite hindering the night vision, and EMIs their radar, and thus Pixy gained a bit of stealth here. This approach required it, and he was quite satisfied to hear them looking for him.

"Verdammt, wo ist diese Verrat (damn, where is this traitor)?" Jaschah bellowed, frustrated that he had not been able to land a single hit on the barely flying F-15C. And if Pixy was that good with a severely damaged, he was now glad to engage him in such a state, or he would have already been blown sky high.

"Ich weiß nicht. Und diese elektromagnetischen Interferenzen sind so stark wie zwei E-767 oder mehr. (I don't know. And those EMIs are as strong as two E-767 or more)" One pilot from the second wave complained, not knowing any of Pixy's intent towards him. They hadn't set the Merlins to their maximum power that could have been dangerous for both side, but even in this lesser powerful use, this Wunderwaffe was jeopardizing the task of the Blau Falke squad.

Pixy wanted to reply "bereit, dein Männer zu Töten (about to kill your men)" but he restrained himself from giving his position. It would have been a complete waste, as he was finally where he wanted to be, right below the two at the right of their small four plane formation. Sometimes using two four-plane formation was efficient when the squad counted eight planes. But he only knew one squad that knew how to use this tactic, and it was the Schwarze squad, who was now loyal to the CSB, and thus almost new friends if he was now considering his own change of alliances.

The plane at the far right was sprayed with gunfire from below. The pilot and the WSO had their lower member pierced, with blood spraying on the cockpit. But what ensured them a quicker death than hemorrhages were the few bullets that went through their entire torso and thus, their lungs and other vital organs. And what achieved to kill them was a single missile from the same F-15C. It did not target them, but the closest Balder. And as its pilot tried to evade it by doing some aileron roll, he impacted with the loose fighters containing the two agonizing pilots.

Then, Pixy pitched up a bit, orienting his back toward the ground and accelerated as he flew very boldly between the two survivors of the second wave, which performed evasives as they had now come to fear this pilot that kept flying and killing when most pilots, including them would have already bailed out.

"Diese Söldner ist verrückt. Haben wir keine Chance gegen ihn (this mercenary is crazy. Do we have any chances against him)?" One of the WSO from the craft that Foulke had almost hit in his climb, having trouble to keep sight on the F-15C in this harsh environment.

"Eigentlich. Ihr habt keine. (indeed, you don't have any)" Pixy sealed their fate after a short horizontal loop that brought him directly in their six hours.

And as they leveled, a single missile struck both fighters, before gun bursts set their engine ablaze, making them plunge toward the ground and an unavoidable death, while Pixy smirked, somewhat happy of his achievement here.

Still, there was something that diminish his happiness a bit : with his prior missed shot, he only had 5 missiles left and only a bit more than fifty gun rounds. Another fact diminished further his joy, when one of the hunters flew either too high or too close from the Bienenstock Base, and thus was targeted by the last LW. The two men onboard could have tried to bail out, but they certain death than uncertain death on the ground, as no one was safe when hell was unleashed on earth. They set their afterburners to their peaks, and despite the fire of the Lichtswirbel reducing their fire to a burning piece of metal, their sacrifice was worth it, as it disabled the not very strongly armored TLSs set on this new model of tank produced by ZHI and not even tested nor completed this morning.

"Crap, that won't help." Pixy swore, as the Bienenstock had once more lost its heavy defenses. Sure, the few remaining AA guns could inflict damage on slow attackers but not fast one.

This sudden shift in the fragile balance between the CSB and the North Belkan forces caused another shift, but a shift of mind. The mind from the crew of the SFFS-equipped F-15E changed, and its vector too: from out of the denied battlespace, he was no rushing toward the Bienenstock. They knew they would get perforated by AA guns on the way, but for them the death of all those traitors that had turned their allegiances to this bunch of anarchist was a fair trade.

"I'm on them." Pixy exclaimed, falling from the altitude of the second wave of fighter. He knew the damaged airframe of his eagle would not like to be put under pressure one more, but he needed it to last for a bit more of time.

"Denn schnell!" Oswin asked for his full attention on this life-threatening issue for him.

In the tower, Oswin felt a bit of panic gaining him. The F-15E was approaching fast, and this despite his engines being damaged and now only spewing bright flames in the air due to the fire of their anti-aircraft artillery. A pair of missiles preceded the aircraft and hit the tower hard, causing many to fall as the floor on which they were standing shivered hard. Oswin did not know what he would give to see the DW-2 that were supposed to pick him up once this battle would have met its end.

Then they heard another explosion, nearby. Almost everyone had been ready for the worst. Their end would not mean the end of everything, but they wanted to see the end of this battle at least, for the death of the AA guns operator and the Donner squad members would not be in vain.

Next, the floor shivered again, but not like it would have if the loose F-15E had crashed on it. Or in this case, it would mean that the ferroconcrete of the tower was stronger than it was expected. The operator managing the cams immediately confirm the happy news : the F-15E had hit the runway, or at least its remains.

Indeed, Pixy had had the time to catch him soon enough, and sprayed bullets all over their canopy, hearing very satisfying scream of agony. Still, killing the pilots and WSOs did not cancel the momentum of their plane, and he had to fire one missile to finish what the Lichtswirbel had started -destroying those fighter-bombers-.

"Nice Shot, Pixy. Just mob the rest now." Oswin tried to foster the resolve, with some renewed optimism, as he only saw three planes still threatening his former student. Besides, the long-range radar was showing what he interpreted as what he wanted to see.

"Easier said than done. But it will be done" Pixy noticed the mauling circle the last three survivors of Blau Falke had enacted as he was dealing with their last potent attacker.

"That should be easy. I'm going in!" Blau Falke sieben broke the mauling circle and his chain of command only fifteen second after they had begun the engagement, fed up by the arrogance and above all the success of this merc.

His ill-aimed fire was easily avoided by Pixy, despite the best efforts of his WSO to try to optimize the guidance of their SAAMs. However, it resulted in his almost always unbalanced F-15 entering in another nth spin. Even if he had a harder time recovering due to another pair of SAAMs that he had to fool in the process, he managed to achieve it. And as he had gained quite a lot of speed in the spin itself, and not lost too much as he recovered from it, he was able to get out of the mauling circle.

"Herzog, du Dummkopf! You give him the chance he needed to evade us!" Jaschah blamed the incompetence of his men, rather than blaming his lack of authority. After all, these RR pilots only recognized the authority of the party and their own had sometimes trouble respecting the chain of command, as most old commander didn't respect their ranks given by politicians away from the battlefield.

And Pixy didn't lose any time capitalizing on this single chance. Using his newly gained speed, he pulled out an Himmelman and surprised the third fighter that was still circling. A simple gun burst was enough to neutralize the fighter, as he was approaching it from its third hours.

The number sieben, followed a bit behind by his leader, tried to climb back at the F-15C. However, Pixy saw this attack coming from a thousand miles away at least, and evade the missiles with ease, diving inverted to increase his descent speed, while firing two missiles that ended another Ralder's life while his fire grazed harmlessly his Eagle.

"Du bist dran, Jaschah. (it's your turn)" Pixy threatened his once brother-in-arms that he had grown to despise as his ascension was only through politics. Not as much as he hated Ashley, but he would not hesitate to fire on his chute if he even tried to bail out.

"You'll die, Knecht. (servant)" Jaschah tried to muster some threatening tone in his voice, but the shiver it showed had the opposite effect.

"Du bist den Knecht. Und ich bin der Meister. (you're the servant. I'm the master)." Pixy replied with a much harsher tone, really sending shivers to his nemesis's spine.

The two Belkan pilots went for an aerial joust now that the verbal joust was over. But both trials showed the same results, as Pixy managed to spray his gun on the enemy aircraft, scoring several hits on both canopy and engine, while the F-15E gun's only cut a small piece of his rudder.

At last, in a desperate attempt, the RR pilot tried to hit the rogue mercenary. However, Pixy had learned of a new way to cross the path of an aircraft head-on since the beginning of this war, learned from the best. The best being his former leader.

"Have a nice stay… in Hell." Were his wishes for the Belkan pilots, as he tried to crash into his F-15C but failed, with Pixy's left wing passing between his rudders as the mercenary flied tilted for a while.

Then, he executed a small horizontal loop, and fire one of his two last missile on his unworthy adversary. The F-15E instantaneously burned with its two Ralder followers onboard, leaving no print of them in the air or on the ground.

"Bienenstock to Pixy, you'll have to hold a bit more." Oswin announced, as he was still uncertain of the nature of those aircraft incoming, that were not responding to his calls. Maybe they wanted to create some surprise effect on the oncoming Oseans, North Belkans and Yukte coming from the north-western and all eastern parts of the valley.

"I'll try then." Pixy said, sighing a bit as he had now little ammo left. Only one missile and less than fifty rounds. Maybe he could still shoot one or two aircraft if he made every bullet counts. But outside of jettisoning the canopy and using his handgun, he was not seeing any other means of defending himself besides evasives right now.

 **Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 21:55, Weather: heavy thunder**

However, for Pixy, his troubles were not over, as he thought he could have some rest, having successfully shot down his former brother-in-arms. Volleys of XLAAs, XMAAs and SAAMs fired by MiG-31s and F-14Ds of Belka and Osea, F-16Cs from Osea, Su-33s of Yuktobania and Mirage 2000s of Belka , and by more MiG-29s and F-15Es of this unholy alliance caused him to fly out of his trajectory toward the valley, and especially its eastern limits that more bombers were about to cross. Which were followed by more. He would need an area with obstacles to hinder the lock-on capacities of these damn missiles if he wanted to survive.

So, he headed southward, toward what was once a beautiful city and was now only but a field of reddish flames destroying everything in sight. There, he hoped that the few burning skyscrapers that had not collapsed yet could provide him some cover. Besides, the gigantic fire was messing with his thermal sensors greatly, so it would mess with theirs too. They would have to get up close and personal if they wanted to have a shot. Which would not be easy, as those gigantic heat sinks could create rogue waves in the air currents above the airspace

And what he saw next only cemented the hellish feeling that this destructive battle was bringing to earth. The entire valley looked like a door of hell opened on earth, or one of those pictures taken of this catastrophe movies with super volcanoes. The bright oranges were acting as colored opposites to the blueish lights of the ionosphere. Massive clouds of burn dusts were covering some areas, acting like clouds of cinders, and reinforced the impression of volcanic eruption. He had already seen the peak of the Mt Ivrea being decapitated and turned into a burning caldera, but this was limited to a small area, while Hoffnung was quite a big city. Illuminated from time to time the heavy clouds of dust were sanguine red lightings, as if the air itself was now bloodstained.

"To hell with those ideas of sane and good war", Pixy swore as he was arriving over the burning city. There was nothing left to fight for, absolutely nothing. Only the symbol of what once the center of Belkan engineering feats, maybe. Thus, it had maybe some importance for the CSB, who was now fighting with the technological marvels built in these now destroyed factories.

 **Valaisian Alps, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 21:20, Weather: clear**

A bit sooner, an agent of chaos who was far away from all this chaos she had contributed to create was now filled with questions, as she was now at thirty kilometers of altitude and above the three thousand kilometers per hour.

Why the Griffon had been ready could be explained through ties in all military forces. Then the question was not to which extent were Kupchenko's links in foreign militaries running, but which military had not been infiltrated yet and housing within their walls the eyes, ears and hands actively working for the Pendragon Projekt? Maybe none was, and amongst those agents many were in armies and countries not directly involved in this war, but whose support through simple supplies could shorten its duration or favor one side.

Why there was no Osean on the base had already been theoretically answered by Herr Steller, but his explications seemed to be vague, as if he was hiding something. She was not saying the truth nor asking for it, but there she had clearly detected some lies. Of course, she was not envisaging the possibility of the Ustian staff having brutally murdered all Oseans in their sleep or violently enough so they would not have the possibility to fight back. Such behavior could have been hers, but she knew Steller to be a bit more of a considerate man than she ever was.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 20:45, Weather: clear**

Perrault was looking cautiously at the radar, hoping for the Stormbreaker to show up anytime soon, or at least to call on the radio when they would have cleared the pass between the smaller valleys and the main one where this hiking station -since there was not enough snow around to do some skiing right now- was located. It was now standard procedure for any flight coming here, to fly through the mountain with radio silence, or at least limited to short-range intra-team radio, in order to decrease the likelihood of being picked up by the enemy Merlin satellites.

He had received some news about the North Belkan agreeing to use their ASAT missile against these deadly devices, but he was once more suffering from the poison of doubt that had sapped the morale of the Osean army ever since the EMP disaster, and especially his due to personal losses. Thus, he had some doubt about their capacities to even damage a single one of these spacecrafts. At least they could distract them for a while, he considered.

Himself despised those people as much as those who had joined this rogue faction that the CSB was. His superiors had used the term faction to describe them in their last call. They had grown in power or respect, if they had gone from "a bunch of anarchist and fools" to a military faction.

The few data that he was receiving from the frontlines were not indicating a bright news. Some B-52s had stepped too close of Hoffnung and had been shot down by modified F-35s. How Belka had gotten their hands on those was a mystery for the all OIA, and now a sentiment of suspicion was adding itself to the doubt, and that would not help boost the morale of the allied forces. Who should be renamed the Oseano-Yukte alliance from his point of view, as Ustio was basically just one pilot, a few cargo ship and some ground troops, and Sapin lacked long-range bombers for such attacks, as this small country had not deemed necessary to invest in such kind of weaponry when fighters-bombers were cheaper to maintain and more versatile. Maybe they were right in some ways, as B-52s, Tu-95s, B-1s and Tu-160s were now only target practice for the operators of Tauberg's Wunderwaffe. B-2s weren't faring well either, just a bit above the rest thanks to their stealth.

Lost in his thoughts, he barely noticed the small noise produced by the metallic door being opened, due to the spring in the system that would close it automatically being a bit old. And changing it or getting a new one that was not the priority of the people maintaining the base. Maintaining the planes and the defense system.

Still, he heard someone advancing behind him, and turn his head toward the newcomer, being the chief mechanic of this base, Herr Steller. He seemed concerned about something, there was something a bit off about him at first glance, Perrault thought, as he asked him the reason of him coming in this small room of the control tower that the Ustian had arranged for the Osean personnel, to give them a bit of privacy for important communications :

"Have something to report, Steller?"

"Yeah, something to show to you. You don't have to stand up, I'll explain to you." The Ustian replied with a falsely chilled tone.

"Then sit and we will discuss this matter." Perrault designated with a hand gesture a chair near his monitoring screen, trying his best to appear polite to this Ustian. Which wasn't easy given the fact that their minister Kerzen tasked with the allied forces relation had pointed out that he was considering peace talks with the CSB as Ustio had no reason to fight them, and most Ustian had no good reasons to fight after the liberation of their capital.

Steller nodded, and Perrault readied himself to go into long and boring conversation about the issue he was coming to tackle. But that never happened. Steller never sit down next to him.

Instead, he fell something metallic and cold on the back of his neck. The muzzle of a gun was pressed against his nape, creating some unpleasant feeling, as well as a bit of fear from Perrault, who risked asking:

"What the hell are you doing?"

But to this small outburst of violence the only response was that the force applied on his neck was increased, now hurting him. He tried to put his leg on the floor but then the force was increased once more.

"Do not try anything if you don't want to be a cold body that we could easily disposed of in the mountains." Steller implied, knowing very well how scarce the people in those mountains were. Sure, there was a few relays for hikers and some hamlets, but nothing more. With luck, he would be found by some archeologist three thousand years later, in a block of ice.

Then he took the handgun of the Osean from his pocket and put it in his own, before letting a choice for the Osean :

"I can do this the hard way or the soft way. The hard way is with a little souvenir on your temple." Steller specified, not wanting to lose too much time dragging his unconscious body around

"I won't obey a mere technician." The Osean retorted, now knowing that not only their pilot might turn traitors, but their mechanics as wells.

"The hard way it is, then." Steller decided not to wait, removing his Luger from the nape of the Osean to strike at his temple, pistol-whipping the Osean into unconsciousness. He called for some resistance members that were waiting out of the room with their submachine guns ready to fire at the Osean in case things took a bad turn.

 **Valais Air Base, Ustio, 11/06/1995, 21:15, Weather: clear**

Perrault was awakened by the strong noise of a fighter taking off. But he could not recognize the noise of any known allied nor Belkan plane. As he woke up from his involuntary thirty-minute nap, he realized where he was and who he was with. Where was in some cell, maybe in the basement of the base. It was in similar cells that they had put that Nühmer pilot under bars. Who he was with were just all Oseans assigned to this base, who were making the cell appeared to be overcrowded. Most of them were sleeping, as if they had been drugged with some sleeper agent. Sleeper agent that had been easily put in their food by Steller's wife as she was the chief cook of the base

Of course, when he put his hand on his temple, he felt some pain there, as this technician had acted softly on him.

A voice shook them out of their apathy, coming from a mike set over the metallic door:

"You should have obeyed me, Perrault. That wouldn't have changed anything but at least you wouldn't have this bad bruise as a reminder of your incompetence."

"What are you going to do to us?" Perrault asked, worried of his fate in those hostile mountains.

"Oh, nothing. You see, we put a breaching detonator on the door. When we'll leave this base, it will detonate, and you'll be free to go. Of course, we will have taken all the supplies and shut down all means of communication. The closest mountain relay is at only two days of intensive walk." Steller indicated, having no harmful intent toward those Osean. At least this Perrault would be a bit thinner if he had to walk without having much to eat.

"What was that noise?" Perrault asked, trying to understand what was happening beyond the betraying of those Ustians.

"The Griffon taking off. Soon it'll take out your high-altitude attackers. And the victory of the CSB will be complete." His tormentor specified, having no shame in admitting that he was a double agent. One of the main reasons why Kupchenko was warned of the assassination tentative and survived it.

But he was not the only member of A World With No Boundaries here. Hervin was, and had perfectly played his game at Directus, which was to ensure the death of the local Belkan commander. Furthermore, many of the leaders of the Ustian resistance had links with AWWNB, without denying the fact that they had willingly fought for Ustio despite their true loyalty. Most of the simple members were not and were mainly simple citizens wanting to liberate their nation, and once the occupation had ended, most of these had returned to a more peaceful civilian life. Indeed, all of the resistance hard-liners and main leaders that had become new Ustian soldiers and for some were former soldiers that had only wanted to avoid becoming POW by entering in the resistance, including Herr Bronsted for example, were all AWWNB members. And all were ready to deal with the Osean contingent when time would come...

A dozen minute passed before anything happened. Then, the roaming of four turbopropeller achieved to wake up the last Oseans. The A-400M that had brought them here was setting for a course that they could easily deduce: Tauberg. On board were all the Ustians of the base, as well as the Belkan prisoners, even if they would not be treated as such anymore once they would have landed.

And a minute later, as the roaming of the turboprops was vanishing, some electronic noise was heard, beeping to be precise. The beeps intensified in intensity and frequency, worrying a bit the Osean that were still under the side effects of the sleeper agent, or for the case of Perrault with an heavy headache that was scrambling his thoughts.

After a final high-pitch beep, the breach door explosives finally blew up, opening the door in the process. Now the Osean were on their own, stranded in the middle of hostile mountains, with little to no supplies and a long route ahead of them. Furthermore, few had made high altitude survival training, and the fact that the Ustians took every weapon while leaving would not help them a single bit. But to be honest, did their tormentors care about them? No, they did not.

 **Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 22:10, Weather: heavy thunder**

Pixy was now where the last skyscrapers of Hoffnung were still standing, despite being ablaze. They looked like gigantic torch sticking out of the ground. At least this was only asserting the resilience of those building. So, there would be something left here, more than darkened stones and distorted metallic pieces.

Still, Pixy did not get much time to think about the becoming of this place, as two MiG-31s with a light grey two-tone color paintjob approached his location and opened fire from afar. They were surely guessing that against an enemy that had killed dozens of their friends and new allies, entire volleys of XLAAs was not too nice.

In usual times, Pixy would have considered their attempt to be foolish at first, and then laughable. But not now, with a damaged fighter, limited mobility, and speed, that was not the time to be cocky or become reckless. So, he took this threat on his life with the utmost seriousness. After all, his was barely hanging by a thread right now.

But he had not much time to device great schemes to defeat those two fighters, as the XLAA were getting close on his tail. From short distances, they had not been too hindered by the EMIs, and as they were EM locked, they did not suffer from the massive heat waves coming from the fire below. This raging fire was shy he could not just do some spin, as he was too low. If he did not recover fast enough, he would end up in the inferno. And he had great doubts about his craft being capable to survive flying through a wall of flames. That A-12 squad had not succeeded in going through a plasma curtain earlier, so he was not going to tempt the devil by going through hell, literally speaking.

He set his sights on a pretty tall skyscrapers that was only a burning tower of metallic pieces, slightly shivering due to the air current created by the raging fire. Air current that he was feeling each second, and that complicated greatly his approach. He only hoped that these would hinder the MiG-31s in their approach, as they were a bit less stable than his F-15C in subsonic.

What he did was still foolish in the end : to skim vertically less than a meter away from the burning tower. But the way he pulled that out, pitching suddenly as some of the XLAAs that had been fired slightly sooner than the others were catching up on him, allowed him to lose some of them. However, the seekers of some missiles manage to correct their trajectory, despite the small explosions caused by the loose XLAAs slamming into the burning tower.

As he was at the three fourth of his ascension, he felt his plane vibrating like if he was a giant cell phone set on vibrate. His survival was almost a success until then.

"Damn piece of metal, can you just hold on for a bit." He asked without speaking, as the plane was becoming less and less stable. Or was this the effect of some of those rogue currents produced by the overheated air near him. Maybe he did tempt the devil here, and he was now claiming his soul. And as the soul of a warrior was his weapon, he would claim his fighter with him inside.

"Diese Verrat wird schon brennen. (that traitor will soon burn)"

"Einverstanden, sein Flugzeug zitterte wie Espenlaub (agreed, his plane his shivering like a leaf)."

"Please, just hold on, old pal. If I survive this one, I'll sold you to the Technische Museum of Directus and give the benefits for the war orphans." He promised, hoping that whatever fate had stored for him, he would at least see the end of this war. Or at least this battle. Or, maybe, just the end of this small skirmish. After all, did money really matter to him? Not that much. Maybe it came from his Belkan origin, but he was still holding, and would still hold honor and pride above money, despite being a mercenary.

Apparently, there was maybe some god or goddess of war looking out for him, or just dumb luck, because his badly damaged afterburners on his remaining left engine came to life for an instant, giving him the thrust he needed to escape those XLAAs. He even managed to do an aileron roll that somehow tricked the seekers into a collision. Well, that is what he believed. the truth was that his sudden added thrust had caused some metallic pieces that the heat had weakened to fall on those missiles, effectively destroying them.

Soon, he saw the top of the skyscraper below him, with the antenna looking like a burning treetop that would have been struck by lightning. Speaking of those, he had seen those red lightnings near these high buildings, but not a single one recently.

He was only two hundred meters higher than its limits when he was struck by what he feared the most, as a stall at low altitude meant death here, whether or not you could bail out. Maybe crashing and dying in the explosion was better than burning while hanging on your chute, he guessed.

Hopefully for him, his afterburners that had had his swan song in this ascension helped taking his severe blow to his craft. A thing that surprised him as he was blinded by the red flash, was that he did not see the lightning coming from above him. He guessed it was too fast to be seen. Besides, he needed to care more about the physics of his falling plane right now, than electrostatics.

However, for the two MiG-31s catching on him, this was visible : the lightning did not struck from the sky, but ascend from the metallic structure below him, and then resumed its path into the dark sky. Still, as they were pretty close too, the lightning did blind them a bit. Not enough to rend them blind and discourage them in their chase, but enough to make them lose the F-15C when it fell from the sky; having momentarily lost his thrust.

Thus, they made the mistake of flying by the same burning skyscrapers, as from above this building they sought to get a good views of their surroundings, and of where this damned Belkan mercenary, this servant of Ustio had fallen, to either confirm his death or carry out this definitive sentence. Maybe they were fooled by the lies of those that believed that lightning never strikes twice at the same place.

Which was, obviously false. Like most of these instinctive thoughts, it was just lies, taught by people fearing what they do not understand. And it was just proven to them right now. Once more, the lightning was shot from the burning building, like if the last remains of this city were denying victory to the people seeking to destroy it.

Unfortunately for them, those red lightnings were not the only thing climbing to ensure of their doom. The second thing was a mercenary that had barely managed to recover, but recover, nevertheless. He had seen the fire from very close, too close for his taste. And now he was going to make them taste hell as well. Coming from their side, the diminished eagle killed his two enemies, one with a missile and a gun burst with their impact making it fall, leaving a clear window of fire on the second Foxhound. This one met his end as well as Pixy's ammo, bullets piercing its reactor, resulting in the MiG-31s being set ablaze.

"Never believed those fools who think that lightning never strike twice." Pixy stated, as the two MiG-31s kept burning for a few seconds, before exploding sky-high.

He expected their pilots to have accepted their death and die in their planes. But no, they had bailed out, maybe with even more foolish hopes of survival than his Ustian brother in arms against the Helligen Kolumne during operation dynamo. At least they accepted their death with honor, every one of them. Not those Ralders.

Today, he could say he had gone through Himmel und Hölle. But those two chutes headed straight to hell, as a rogue air current engulfed them. Pixy saw the two chutes being set ablaze as they descended far faster than what could be expected to be seen, sucked in the inferno. Then they vanished in the raging fire, without a trace. If they were lucky maybe some bones or tooth would survive. If not, their cinders would be dispersed, and they would disappear from this earth completely.

Pixy realized that this fate would be shared by any allied pilots or crewmen from the bombers than had been shot down by Excalibur early on, if other air current sucked them into the inferno. If he were still allied, that would have brought dread to his heart, to think about this horrible death. He did not enjoy it either, only mad people could.

And above all, he did not have the time to enjoy it because the other fighters had caught up with him, as he had tried to run away from this area to avoid those almost blood red lightning. Again, he was pushed against the wall, with the main difference being that this time he had nowhere to flee, and no more opportunity to retaliate.

With each missile he had to avoid, he felt his reflexes becoming slow, like some deadness taking over. He had since a long time come to realize the uselessness of this war. He had grown tired of this. On other continents he had already seen the same, people fighting for useless reasons. Maybe he should have gone with his other half over Directus. At least his end would have had a meaning. Now, it had none. His end would not change the fate of the world, nor of this senseless war

A bit of gun fire interrupted his chain of thoughts. Three Mirage 2000 were closing on him, and one pierced his right wing. This caused him to stall and enter a spin that brought him closer to the fire than what he wanted. He felt the heat of the inferno raging below. He even saw sparkles forming around his wings, and some part of his wingtips beginning to burn.

But it was only the external layer that was burning, along with the paint on it. He got rid of those nascent flames as he dived above the river, which was surrounded by fog, created by the combustion of some container-carrier. He got a bit of water as he went through the low cloud, but it was better to have water on the canopy than heavy cinders. For a short moment he was safe from his opponent, only to be pursued again as he went out of the cloud.

"Ich werde bei dir bald sein (I'll be with you soon)." He said to himself, and above all to his dead lover, as a few more bullets severed the upper part of his left rudder, making his plane very sluggish.

Now, he could feel the fear again, that he had felt during operation dynamo. But Kupchenko had let him live, for an unknown reason. He had received a conditional sentence that day. For a few weeks he was allowed to live and fight, but he knew that this sentence would be applied, despite his best efforts to escape this judgment. He was like those knights that had fought in their fortress but had not died alongside their brothers when he would have liked to. Now the fear was almost choking him like a rope if this death sentence would be by hanging him. He could feel it even if there was nothing on his neck.

Soon, all would be over. His strength had failed him. His fighting skills too, or met their limits, and he should not have tried to cross those limits. Death was what was waiting for everyone that tried to push their limits too hard. Death and chaos had ruled his life and he had lived through them, and now he would face death in the middle of this chaos. He only wished this slow walk in the death corridor to end.

He even saw some missiles incoming from head-on. From where they were coming, he did not know. But that would end his sufferance faster. He was ready to jump with the rope around his neck and die. He tried to toss some final epic line, but could only swear a:

"Verdammt. Sie sind zu viele! (damn, there're too many of them)"

But no. Something snapped in his destiny. The rope that his enemies wanted to hang him with snapped. Or, in a more realistic manner, the missiles that were coming head-on did not strike at him. No, they flew harmlessly, before resuming their way. Way toward his pursuers, who were completely taken aback and were all shot down. Others, MiG-29s and F-16Cs tried to fire at him, but numerous volley that had come from afar slaughtered them.

Then he heard his voice :

"Aber es gibt vielmehr Mut unserem Innern (But there's much more bravery within us)" A commanding and chill voice said, bringing a bit of hope in the heart of Pixy despite the city of Hope burning.

"I thought I would never say that, but I'm happy to see you, Anton." Pixy replied, almost crying from joy as he had finally snapped out of his deadness, for good. There was now a Chance for survival for him. He would take it, and the next one, until they would win this

"Erben, cover him. Schwarze, cover the DW-2 for Oswin's extraction. Gault zwei zu vier und Ich wird die letzten Bomber zerstören." Kupchenko laid out his plans, and thus rushed to the North-East, where a second wave of B-52 was approaching at high altitude. It was no big deal, they would reach the stratosphere with ease, as each of their engines were heavily tuned up and produced one point five the thrust of the mainline Berkut.

"Ver." Schwarze one to four said, as they went for the North, where airborne troops were being moved in an effort to capture the last personnel in the Bienenstock base. Often, he would fire at fleeing transport, not incoming. But in both case Zubov would feel nothing for the soldiers inside of those flying coffins. Their targets were a group of C-130s that had already been half depleted by fire from Excalibur. Their only advantage was that their turboprops were slightly more resilient to EMIs, or to plasma being sucked into the intake, but that wouldn't save them from the ERAAMs of the DW-2 nor their XLAAs they had taken full load.

"Hang on tight, we're coming for you" Zveda announced to Pixy, rushing toward his plane at Mach 2, while some F-14Ds were hot on his tail, and had begun peppering the F-15C with gun fire, damaging his right rudder this time.

"I'm barely hanging on by a thread." The Belkan mercenary specified, as minor, and major structural integrity warning were appearing on all of his screens, invading his field of sight with a bit redder, if it was not already red enough with the inferno spreading in all direction.

Still, he almost wanted to do an evasive maneuver when he deduced what this Erbe was up to: crossing his path tilted at a ninety-degree angle and fly between his now very damaged rudders. He was just a bit afraid that the much more powerful jet wash of the ADFX-01 -compared to the small engines of the X-29A- would destabilize his craft. But he did not move, a bit reluctant though, and the ADFX-01 left wingtips grazed his plane, passing only mere centimeters from his canopy. It was almost a miracle that he hadn't been hit once on the canopy, actually.

On his rearview mirror, he saw the power of their new weaponry, this built in TFLS that replaced their already very efficient gun. It did trade its power for a small two second readying delay, but for those two second of delay the power it could bring to the battlefield was impressive, enough to disable most fighters, even the mighty A-10 Warthog. Pixy saw the first exploding instantaneously as the shot went right for his left inlet. The second tried to counter-attack but his fire was avoided by an aileron roll. This maneuver had raised the ADFX-01 a bit, so he was not straight ahead of the Tomcat, but over it. And its pilot only had to pitch down to land a shot on the back of the plane, igniting its rear fuselage fuel tank and a few seconds later, the whole plane.

The second Erbe did not lose time either. He flew nearby while his wingman was dispatching one more F-14 by firing on its wing, with the energy transferred being enough to cause the wing fuel tank to implode. And she fired twice, snapping both wings of the enemy plane with ease. What his colleague did remind Pixy of his second former leader, as he flew below the Su-33s, maybe five hundred meters, skimming above the Löre, then pitched up a bit and fired a shot of his Energiewaffen (energy-based weaponry, shortened in Ew) while firing two missiles on another one, making both aircraft plunge into the inferno while being on fire.

But what remind him the most of his leader, he saw after he did some U-turn to have a better view on those modified ADFX-01s. Maybe ADFX-02 was a better name, if they had such disparity with the first Morgans, that obviously Pixy did not know of their demise by the hand of his leader. The two other Su-33 were dealt by a pair of ERAAMs from Zveda, freeing the other Erbe two engage another group of three Mirages. Flying in line astern, he evade with grace their XMAAs and missiles, before firing a couple of missiles on the leading craft at the center of the formation and evading the gunfire of the two others with an half aileron roll, inverting back after crossing the path of his enemies.

Then, what he did was a perfect head-to-tail maneuver, while the Mirage were trying to quickly turn around to engage him, but lost a great deal of speed by doing so. Henceforth, the left one did not have enough energy to evade a pair of missiles, while the second one suffered an Ew shot on his nuzzles, with destroyed and partially sublimated parts being sucked into his engine. Both Mirages exploded five seconds later, as the two Erbe were leveling on Pixy's craft, who was looking closely at these prototypes with a certain bit of envy.

"This last upgrade his quite nice." The female pilot identified as Zveda spoke, now getting used to this weapon. Of course, it had been efficient here because their enemies were not aware of it, and because the inherent mobility of their ADFX-02s was enough to overpower them in this field. Any plane with enough mobility to escape gunfire would be able to evade Energiewaffen. Besides, now they had to fire straight, where their enemy is, and not where it will be.

"Well, Wunderwaffen are only good when they're on your side." Pixy agreed that such plane could turn the tide of battlefields, like they just did today.

Above the Bienenstock, the battle was even shorter. Despite not being able to carry ERAAMs yet, the four Schwarze survivors of the previous battle over Blumenberg slaughtered the assault airborne force, with the added fire of the DW-2s. Oswin and his last mens were picked up as the C-130 were laying in pieces on the ground, or for the luckiest, were trying to escape the wrath of Schwarze. But like some fleeing Belkans which had learned the hard way that Schwarze's MO was "no survivors", those Oseans learned too. They had had a pretty good flight until them, as they only flew above the cities of Fato to be protected of any long-range strikes. None of them made it further than the Northern limits of the valley. Some exploded with all of their crew and airborne troops, while some had enough structural integrity left to allow their troops to use their chute. Yet, even if the Schwarze squadron had not emptied their guns of their chutes, their fate would have been sealed: the few survivors of this cruel slaughter were sucked by rogue air currents in the inferno.

"It's what they deserve." Zubov said, before letting a small and cold forced laugh.

"They wanted to unleash hell. Only for them to fall in it, though." Karkov added, trying to foster the irony of the situation. What should have been another Osean victory was just a nasty defeat, another heavy bloodshed. Osea had not had hemorrhages yet, still. But soon they would've, both internal and external.

"Schwarze Falke vier, we confirm the area has been sanitized of allied presence. The slaughter of their B-52 is over." The co-pilot of the other DW-2 that had followed the four Gault squad members in their bomber killstreak announced, as the last bombers was taking three SAAMs after having his left wing blown off as he flew too close to an Helligen Kolumne.

A few minutes later, the Schwarze squadron had begun its withdrawal, as they would be the escort for the DW-2s carrying Oswin, his troops -that contained twenty percent of wounded, with some in critical state-. Meanwhile, all other planes had joined above the Southern part of Hoffnung.

"It's almost weird to see you two using tactics of my fallen leader." Pixy commented their flight, which was a bit more chaotic than usual. After all, Iskanda had quite an erratic and unorthodox yet efficient fighting style.

"She might be fallen, indeed." Kupchenko said, using a neutral tone. She could be considered as a fallen allied pilot. She was pretty close to fall definitively, lately.

"And it makes me mad that Osea is using a fallen one as a scapegoat." The mercenary expressed his anger that had born during his little unkind talks with the OIA member.

"I think... Wait, you didn't hear the mayor's speech this morning?" Kupchenko did not want to spoil immediately their new ally. After all the damage he had inflicted on the allied forces, he could consider Pixy to be a new member of the CSB aerial forces.

"No. Was war's (what was it)?" Pixy asked, curious to know what this had a link to his fallen leader.

"It ended with "in these uncertain times, look to the future where hope burns bright." Kupchenko quoted, which caused Pixy to look at the sky, far above him, seeing a streak of small explosions.

"That may not be hope that's burning bright above us. More like Tsybins and Starfighters." Pixy corrected, knowing what kind of fighter could fly at such height amongst the allied forces' arsenals.

"Egal. Die Überbringerin von Mord und Chaos ist dort. Wir können nur abwarten und sehen (Whatever… the bringer of murder and chaos is there. We can only wait and see.)." Kupchenko specified who he was waiting for. What he was waiting for did not need any explanation: victory. Victory was within his grasp, and soon he would take it from this almost heretic alliance between the Ralder and the Osean-led allied forces.

 **South of Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 22:15, Weather: heavy thunder**

Iskanda had finally caught up the Osean and Yukte high altitude infiltrators. Below her, on the North was a gigantic ochre serpent, that she could partially see due to the clouds of smoke and cinder covering the skies of Hoffnung. She could count twelve airplanes with similar radar signature, which could come of the fact that both the Starfighter and the Tsybin had a long fuselage and a pair of narrow trapezoidal wings.

As she was getting closer to compensate for her lack of lockable weaponry, she was quite surprised to have a clear view on her preys. Of course, she knew that sometimes clouds of cinder could hinder flight, but it was due to volcanic activities, not giant fires. Besides, they would surely need some time to reach the altitude of thirty kilometers. What explained the extraordinary clarity of her field of view was coming from above: the ionosphere was light up by the fire of the Belkan Wunderwaffe, creating an almost supernatural light despite the late hour.

Getting a bit excited at the idea of fighting again with the Griffon, she felt the adrenaline rushing into her system. And this time, she did not have to counter some Kalium Chloride, so she could feel the whole thing. After these attackers, some modified SR-71s would be a fine dessert. She guessed they were modified because their radar signature was slightly different from the signature of a standard SR-71s. She proceeded to trick her prey into engaging her, flying below slightly above them so she would not be in their blind spot.

One noticed her. The leader of the F-104 did. That was to be expected, as the Starfighter was more of a fighter than a bomber, unlike the Tsybin.

"Red leader to all, we have a bogey behind us." He said, beginning to tilt his wings with red wingtips. The other part of his craft that had received a red paintjob was the upper part of their T-shaped tail.

"Gold squadron on standby. Bogey's for you, red." The Yukte leader answered from his R-020 with a grey camo and gold line on their wings, and the tips of its empennage in the same color. They would stay between them and the other aircrafts, as a second line of defense.

"Come to your doom, Allied forces!" She taunted them, chuckling maniacally afterwards.

"And set me to hostile." She stated, as the line of F-104s slowed down in order to turn around and face her. She almost felt insulted to be considered as a mere bogey and not an imminent death threat.

"All right, set to hostile." One of their pilots reported, as his radar was trying to engage this unidentified craft he had never seen and was on supersonic approach.

"Such target-rich environment." Iskanda whispered, rolling her eyes to the blueish ionosphere for a second, a bit taken over by her envy of murder. One of its expression that showed that was to lick her lips like she was hungry, like a predator having already tasting the blood of its prey upon seeing them. After all, Luchs were predator, and she was intending to eat those F-104s raw.

She did slow down upon arrival to the battlespace, and thus her "Grenze" indicator was illuminated with a blaring red color as the Ramjet engine ceased to produce thrust. And she was far too high to use the very flawed jet engine of her Nord 1500 Griffon. Her plane quickly stalled and fell. The Osean were quite satisfied to see this attempt failing, apparently. They were almost getting ready to turn back into position. It would be a great achievement to score a kill only due some high-altitude stall from their adversary.

However, she had learned the lesson since her highly risked interception of those Belkans XB-10 Valkyries. She just had to use physics at her advantage, and thus further crossing the gap without endangering her aircraft as they would not have a good window of fire due to the very poor mobility of those planes. This was their trade-off : trapezoidal wings allow stability at high speed and a somewhat average mobility at this range, while her delta wings would allow her more mobility, especially in her little spin.

"This is red two, she's not going down. She's climbing right at us." One Osean pilot indicated, as he saw the radar signature getting bigger as the enemy plane was coming back from his induced spin -when they all thought it was an unwanted one-.

"What? How did she accelerate this quick?" Another pilot, their sixth member expressed his utter and whole surprise as she had far reached and gone beyond their climb rate.

This was of course, due to the sheer power of the good ramjet engine she had onboard. Otherwise, if she had a similar plane than theirs, she would not have even been sure to succeed in recovering from her voluntary fall. What mattered was not how she did hit, nor what she did. What would set the score was what she did next, as she was climbing at a high angle of attack toward the enemy team.

She had been climbing back at the left of their formation. Henceforth, as she was arriving in range for her HVRs, she began a slow yawing motion while in her climb, and firing one rocket from time to time, when she deemed that she was at an interesting angle. The first was surprised and hit on the wing he had tried to tilt to evade, but too late. The sixth was the only one to suffer another direct hit. however, the fourth and third plane did share their fate, as they both stall out of control. And as they were pretty close at the peak of their arrowhead formation, they impacted each other following the loss of control. The three others had survived, but barely as her fire was of an accuracy they had never seen from any man in their career. Which could be understandable, as they were facing a woman.

So, while they were fighting with physics to keep their planes in the air after having to evade her rocketfire, she had had the time to level her plane, but she did it on a line that would be parallel to their ten hours. She then had to evade some missiles as she flew in front of them, but as they were fired on the limits of their fire radius for the second and fifth member, only the missile fired by Red seven were a threat. Threat that she nullified by swaying her plane from side to side, which wasn't very pleasant for her body in transonic flight, but it was much better than having to deal with psychopaths.

"Red two to Gold, we might need your help." One of the Osean was now slowly being taken by anxiety as he saw the unknown delta-winged craft perform an Himmelman, and with her direction, she come back at the tenth hours of the craft that had desperately tried to fire his missiles at her.

Only a few hundred meters away from the Osean, his colleague red seven was pierced by multiples bullets, dealing fatal blows to both the planes and the pilot in hit, and the damage being further aggravated by the depressurization at such high altitude above the Armstrong limit. A single perforation above this line, and all water in your body would vaporize, if the pilot had not fully pressurized stratospheric suit. And obviously, if the sealability of their suit was not compromised by some other bullets. Just the water in your eyes or your saliva was enough to kill you.

"Red five, reform with the Gold and fight to live another day. I'll deal with this Belkan scum myself." The now angrier Osean ordered to his wingman, who lose no time in getting out of the engagement zone, even if it was fairly slow for a F-104 to do a U-turn. Then he set his course on the twelve of these enemy fighters.

"Run if you want. You're just delaying the inevitable. And your death is." Iskanda tossed, trying to instill a bit of fear in the heart of her enemy. Seeing the F-104 of red five go in full afterburner to go as far as possible was proof of it.

The two supersonic interceptors rushed onto each other. Both managed to evade each other's missiles and rockets, using tight turns so they would not stall or get too much black or redsight at this speed. A gunfight would decide the issue of their joust, then. If Iskanda managed to evade most of his fire, with maybe only a few impacts on her left wingtips, as she climbed suddenly while enacting an aileron roll. She would strike back as both closed back, completing her aileron roll and diving on the F-104 that tried to pitch up, but at this very moment an HVR struck his rear, snapping the tail off and causing his engine to burst in flames, and later the whole craft.

"Another pathetic death." Iskanda commented with disdain, while she was getting in pursuit of the last Starfighter. By then the number two had ceased to burn to the low pressure, and its burned remains were now falling in the night.

"Help me, Gold squad." The Osean desperately pleaded for help, as the Griffon was gaining the speed competition. After all, it had some advantage, one was not being bearing an heavy belly fuel tank, that they needed due to their base being located outside of Excalibur range, but this location was far beyond their F-104's combat range. This was partially why the number one and six had gone so quickly when they suffered only minor hits from the fragments of the HVR exploding in what they would call non-viable areas, but the warhead of those HVRs had been powerful enough to go through a Bm-335N's armor, so it had no problem dealing critical damage to weaker planes in matter of structural strength.

"No force will help you, red five." She laughed at his attempt at getting away. He tried to sway from side to side to lose her because he thought she would try to lock on to him when she needn't to, and only lost speed when he should have gone for the easier tactic of fleeing in straight line.

"Gold squad, ETA 20 seconds." Their Yukte commander announced, this delay also due to the poor turning speed they shared with the Starfighters. Of course, this was enough for Iskanda to finish her kill and get ready for a new type of enemy.

She first shot an HVR. He could have gone for the easiest solution and tried to roll away of its trajectory, but he preferred to pitch up with a high angle to have the rocket overshoot him. This maneuver brought the Griffon closer to him though, as he was slowed down by his sudden shift in trajectory, and all that Iskanda had to do was to imitate him and pitch up, then press the trigger. The canopy was shattered to a thousand glass pieces, while the engine was pierced on all its length. The pilot burned before dying due to the depressurization.

"Red five is down." A new voice reported. Maybe this was the voice of an Osean in their modified SR-71 since she had not heard him until now.

"And you'll follow him soon." Iskanda assured them, as the five R-020 were charging her head-on. They had some cruise missiles below their fuselage, as well as what she thought to be a targeting pod for those heavy-duty missiles.

They fired a few missiles that had been fixed on pylons below their long trapezoidal wings. Iskanda evaded them with ease, making her plane oscillate on both roll and yaw axis. Then she understood what those pods were, as they fired on her: those were gunpods. Luckily for her, only one land a successful hit, and it was on her wingtips. Sure, those holes would decrease her lift a bit, but she preferred dealing with that than the water of her own body boiling. Besides, as she made their missiles be fired for trash, she had climbed a bit, and thus was out of their firing arcs. But they were not, and as such she had no trouble retaliating at the ones in the middle, firing two HVR on ones, before climbing a bit more, only to dive the next second on the cockpit of the other Tsybin. She saw the plane tilting to move away from her, but by that time it was too late, and a single gun burst in his canopy was enough to end her life.

"What can we do?" Gold 4 asked, as two of them had been shot down so fast that he had not much time to react, and the best option was to run, if they wanted to survive. All could feel the air within their cockpit getting colder, as fear was taking over. However, they had not the same acceleration capacities as a ramjet-powered craft.

She was now enacting a horizontal loop toward her enemies, decreasing her altitude a bit in the process. But this was voluntary, as she had seen that their gunpods had some cannon pointing rearwards, and as she wanted above all not to suffer too much damage in the Griffon. So, she performed a bit of Schräge Musik on two of them, firing her gun and one HVR toward their gun pod. For the first, something unexpected happened: her fire triggered the stored shells to explode below the plane, and as there was a lot left, it was enough to deal critical damage to the Tsybin. The Yukte burned quickly, while she neutralized the gun pod of the other with her gun only this time, wanting to try something else.

"Gold 3, flee toward the Oxcarts!" The now harmless and helpless Tsybin pilot ordered, with the other pilot obeying immediately as he was seeing the Griffon getting higher than the unlucky Gold 5, moving for the kill. The name Oxcart rang a bell in Iskanda's mind, this name being for the armed interceptor variant of the SR-71, often dubbed A-71.

"Let's cut your wings. Don't you want to become a Solo Wing? Or even a No Wing?" She asked rhetorically, while laughing like a madman. Silence followed her proposition ensuring her that they were so afraid of dying since they did not dare to respond her, while she climbed a bit more, then pitched down, aiming at the right wing-root. One HVR later and the engine was cut off along with the trapezoidal wing.

"Just be quick." Her enemy demanded, not wanting to suffer more than it was needed. After all, death was more than often instantaneous and painless if he was lucky enough.

"Oh, just for you it won't be." She denied him his last wish, before executing a streak of two sharp turns leftwards. G-forces took their toll on her, but not as much as her next shot on him. She fired on the left wing-root this time, and the Tsybin fell pretty soon, entering an uncontrolled spin. He would be almost unconscious due to this spin, but conscious enough to feel his death twenty-five kilometers below

"We have her locked. Fox 3." One A-71 Oxcart indicated, firing a pair of XLAA rearward. Of course, he was not expecting her to intercept both missiles instead of trying to evade them.

Some other pairs followed, but none were successful, with Iskanda depleting a bit her ammo as a way to actively defend herself, and not lose too much speed as she was chasing the last Tsybin. Soon he was in her crosshairs. He saw that, and ready himself to roll out of the way, since he could not counterattack with her being higher than him. Furthermore, his plane was good to do high angle of attack climbs, while small angle of attacks would only slow him down and made him an even easier target to shoot at.

She did fired a HVR the next second, and he did roll out of its trajectory. He thought this maneuver had put him out of harm's way. But he was seriously harmed, as she had fired both her twin mounted guns and an HVR on him, with the gunfire aiming at his starboard engine. And while he rolled, she fired again, igniting the portboard engine. With both engines ablaze, his R-020 was reduced to metallic powder and cinder when the flames got to his wing fuel tanks, thanks to another HVR from his enemy.

Now what was left where ten Oxcarts. For an unknown reason, some seemed to carry something with an exhaust between their engine, linked to both. Before she clearly identified the exhaust, she thought it was some defensive armament, maybe even some laser armament. Then she remembered that these were Osean craft and not CSB prototypes. If they had been, she would have already lost this skirmish and her life.

Some other backward XLAAs were fired, but to no avail, as her plane was a bit more agile than the heavy interceptors its was supposed to go against, with the MiG-31s and Tornado GR4s being good example, who had both worst mobility than the Griffon, despite the latter being not a marvel in this matter. So, the Osean pilot decided to rely on the four that were carrying those strange things strapped to their engines. From the nearly thirty-meter long spy planes were launched thirteen-meter long UAVs. They were not that much smaller than her own craft, if they removed the cockpit of the Griffon.

They flew below their mothership for some seconds, before accelerating greatly and overshooting them. Then they enacted U-turns to go toward Iskanda, who was momentarily put at bay by other volleys of XLAAs. Obviously, their small size and thin fuselage made them able to carry only short-range weaponry, even when those D-71 had never been intended to be used as a defensive armament. They were supposed to be recon drones to limit the damage if they were taken down by interceptors, protecting their carrier. Thus, their anti-air armament was QAAM, but their bay was so small that they could only fire them one at a time.

This forced Iskanda to dive out of the way, having to fly without thrust for a while as the ramjet engine was again inoperative during those steep dives. Two of the drones decided to follow her, or rather their human operator on the backseat of these M-71 variants. They had a bit of autonomy as recon fighters, but never could it be advanced enough to engage enemy fighters. Besides, they did not offer much more resilience to G-forces than a nugget on his first flight.

Also, when Iskanda regain her thrust after having gained enough kinetic energy, but having to bear with an unhealthy amount of G-forces as she climbed back, those UAVs were unable to bear these forces, with their remote pilot having tried to follow her closer and thus turn tighter. One drone was completely lost, as its ailerons were snapped by the acceleration. This caused the Osean operators to rant on those uncompleted drones:

"I knew this was going to happen. Those drones are meant for recon, not dogfight !"

"We tried to convince the higher-up four times." Another added, sighting in exasperation.

"Now I doubt we'll be able to bring to link them back and bring them back home." A third one pointed out, as the second UAV that had followed her had been destroyed by gunfire after she performed an impressive horizontal loop.

"What I doubt is that you'll be able to go home. That seems a bit preposterous to me." Iskanda intervened, while she had now leveled with the two UAVs, but as she had maneuvered a bit more during her climb, she had arrived on their third hour. Both were set to their maximum acceleration to avoid her fire, but both failed to do so. Worst, their transmitters were damaged by her twin gun burst. Thus, they only flew straight after this critical damage.

"Sadly, I might agree with you." The fourth Osean operator said, as she destroyed the now fully harmless UAVs with one HVR each. Soon it would be their undoing too.

The Oxcart, both the A-71 and M-71 variants, tried to run away, thinking that their superior speed would allow them to outspeed any of their pursuer theoretically. But they were some conditions here than their theory did not account for. One was that two Merlins satellites had been activated, which silenced their plane's radio, as the EMIs became too strong to allow any communication for both sides. Still, if they only loss was their radio, they would have been fine. However what they suffered the most was for their engines, with some mobile parts being stuck, and not in their position allowing the ramjet flight.

Thus, what should have been a hasty chase for Iskanda became a slaughter of those Oxcart, her fight being made easier by the fact that she didn't need any radar to aim at her targets while they needed theirs to aim at her with their backward firing XLAAs. It was made even easier, and maybe ludicrously easier, by the fact that Oxcart, like Blackbirds, were basically filled with fuel to the brim. Sure, it was not the most flammable thing and was a bit harder to set ablaze than acetylene, but her HVR had enough power to achieve such results. Besides, since both attackers and prey were flying above Mach 2, this negate a bit the low flammability of their specific fuel. In less than a few minutes all were shot down, with those massive ablaze falling objects being what Pixy was seeing almost twenty kilometers lower.

As she descended in altitude following her slaughter of A-71s, she got a good glimpse at some Helligen Kolumne, above Fato according to her orientation senses. Far away, she saw a few explosions near the blueish lights, as the last Osean B-52 were burning with their payload they hadn't the time to drop on the still burning city of Hope.

She also saw some other lights a bit more at the South of Fato, more toward Gebet and Recta. These two countries were partially in civil war since the beginning of this war, with Both allies and North Belka paying both fighting side, while their official government had stated a neutral status in this war. Neutrality resolved in those civil wars, as both sides were trying to force their hands. Without real army to stop them, they had to let pass the Osean troops that had been sent to invade the CSB through Hoffnung and its railway station, with this building being the only thing they would spare. However, the Belkan Wunderwaffe had rendered many metallic bridges fragile by overheating them, when it was not the work of envoys from the CSBs. Thus, seven armored trains housing a bit more than three thousand men had fallen in flames in the narrow valley those bridges were overhanging. A few luckier soldiers were stuck between two bridges for examples, or in partially crumbled tunnels. But none of that was concerning Iskanda as she began her slow descent toward Hoffnung

 **Hoffnung, Belka, 11/06/1995, 22:30, Weather: heavy thunder**

Her descend lasted quite a lot of time. But after all, she could not just fall from twenty kilometers and then activate the airbrakes just above the ground. She had to do some large circles around Hoffnung, pitched down, which was quite boring to do, compared to all she had done today.

During her descend, she saw the burning city becoming more and more visible, even if the heavy clouds of cinder where hiding most of it at high altitude. The city of Hope was definitively burning brighter than she expected, but the Osean cities would burn even brighter when the counterattack would come. It was something that she knew would come, one day or the other. The arsonist would soon be consumed by their own fire.

Of course, her arrival was noticed by most of the CSB-aligned fighters, with their leader speaking first:

"Hello there Schwarze Luchs." Kupchenko greeted her, with great interest. This bringer of chaos and murder had played her role perfectly, and maybe better than what he had planned in some ways.

"It's nice to be alive and victorious." She agreed that for once she had no interest in killing him. Had her allegiance changed? Sure, she was not part of the allied forces, that was an absolute certainty. However, she had a bit of trouble considering the man that had caused the death of all her friends but one her ally. At least, they were both fighting against the same people for now.

"The evacuation to Blumenberg was a success. People and assets are now well protected. Those losses we suffered, both soldiers and civilians are tragic, but below the five thousand. Osea almost lost more men in this operation than we do. After all, the Merlins have totalized sixty B-52 downed, as well as a great number of B-2s. Their number of losses for their fighters on all front is above the two hundred, so our exchange ratio is below one to twenty. Besides, we have a certain number of downed airmen that survived their chute, while their have much less hope to do so. We can all agree this operation is indeed a stunning victory for us, and a stinging defeat for the coalized North Belka and allied forces." Kupchenko resumed the exchange of live, well in favor of the CSB. It would either push Osea to more extreme extents or reduced even more their capacities and allow them to go on the offensive. Still, total victory was not within his grasp, but a few critical steps had been crossed today.

"Now, we just have to go back to Tauberg, I guess?" Iskanda said, as her radar indicated no other dots but four Su-47, two other forward-swept wing aircraft she deduced were Morgans, along with a last bigger spot. A red lighting light that last craft, which was two craft linked when she looked closer, a Dunkle Wing and a F-15C being refueled.

"Indeed, we're going back home to celebrate our victory with our new friends, Schwarze Luchs. You're coming too, Galm 2." Kupchenko specified what the end of the very busy day of slaughter and killing for Iskanda was. Friends was a good term for his point of view. After all, the adversary of your enemy is your friend.

"It will be a tough landing, but I should made it to." The voice of Pixy spoke, that she had not heard since the second operation Battle-axe. To learn of his survival brought a bit of warmth to Iskanda's heart, as she was joining with the DW-2s to identify this F-15C. She had guessed it could be him but was not sure until she saw the red wingtips and heard his voice. They had both obeyed the first rule of engagement. And she was intending to follow it to the end of this war.

"Refueling complete." the boom operator stated, his voice sounding happy to have finished with this one. The very damaged Eagle vibrated more than ten thousand cell phones on vibrator mode as he tried to connect to the DW-2s. At one point he feared that he could damage the boom, which would have not led to major fire hazard as they had good onboard emergency systems. But for the Eagle that had already performed buddy-buddy refueling over Glatisant after the disaster of operation dynamo, this was nothing impossible.

"Roger. Disconnecting and forming with Schwarze Luchs." He replied, not seeing the need to use her former callsign. Both Galm 1 were dead now, and only Schwarze Luchs had survived and lived. Which was not far from the truth, with the very near-death experience of Iskanda in the early morning of this day.

"Gut. All planes, RZB" Kupchenko ordered, confident that this time Schwarze Luchs wouldn't try anything foolish. She had already shown what was the ranks she would get in a very near future last time. He looked one last time at the burning city, only lighted by the raging fire, with the blueish light slowly disappearing into the night.

As all planes left the airspace, he proceeded to take a small picture of his wife and daughter out of a small pocket on his flight suit. The picture itself had aged a bit with the years, but not his hatred nor his will of vengeance. Even if he knew that what he was doing now was far above his simple wish of revenge on Osea, he still renewed his vows he had taken in the Mausoleum a few years ago:

"Meine Vergeltung ist Nahe. Schon werden Sie leiden wie ich gelitten habe. (My vengeance is near. Soon they'll suffer like I have suffered)" He swore, like he was ready to burn Oured and turned her into the same state than Hoffnung was now.

 **Tauberg, Belka, 11/06/1995, 23:00, Weather: heavy thunder**

After an eventless flight, they all had the one-kilometer high tower in sight. The reason why this flight had been so calm was that all allied planes which once were in the vicinity of Hoffnung and on the way had been destroyed on the way in, and other planes that had to do CAP in the area had been taken out by the other members of Gault that hadn't accompanied the others to Hoffnung.

No one amongst the squadron was surprised to see the Helligen Kolumne right above the tower, as it was doing its ultra-long range fire on the Ulysses asteroids, protecting earth and winning them the opinion of many threatened countries, if their interceptions was to be success. Which was the only thing that Kupchenko expected from the technological marvel that made the pride of Projekt Pendragon.

The approach was pretty silent on the waves, with the exception of order from the control towers to guide the two new "friends" to the runway in the night, until Pixy asked something that was on his mind for the whole trip, and he had tried to find reasons all the way, resulting in him being even more silent. Iskanda hadn't been verbose either, but it was only due to her advanced state of tiredness.

"What was the point of this last stand at Hoffnung? Just a symbol to give hope, or more?"

"Well, yes and no. Of course, we weren't going to let them any hopes of winning there. This is why Neugel ordered the Western side to be burn, especially the railway station that the Osean intended to use to send recovery teams to some of the factories before they would be burned to the ground." Kupchenko began with the justification of their scorched earth policy, which caused the death of an entire Osean marine corps as the incendiary charges they had planted there detonated precisely upon their arrival of their armored train. Osea wanted to obtain some Belkan secrecies, and they only got cinders and death instead.

"About the last stand itself, it was easier to shot down those B-52 above Hoffnung than above the Fatoan cities they are using as base. Fato might be under North Belkan influence, I preferred to give Hoffnung than to reduce an almost neutral country in cinders. It might be a hazardous gamble, but having more allies, or at least neutral-aligned countries will do us better than having more enemies."

"I won't say no to having more enemies." Iskanda intervened, enjoying seeing enemy planes falling all around her and standing in the thick smoke of blood and death.

"You'll have your fair share of targets, do not worry about such trivial details. Besides, Hoffnung is at the limit of the reach of their X-51 waverider hypersonic remote-control cruise missiles. And since no launch was reported, while Merlins operator report Osean planes carrying them, destroying those planes had deprived Osea of the more potent threat they had against us. If they had managed to cross the Löre and fired them, we could have suffered some damage." Kupchenko finished his justification of their last stand. And as the factory that produced them had been destroyed in the EMP disaster, those were likely their whole stock that had been depleted, according to the data his eyes and ears at the allied GHQ had sent to him prior to their night flight.

"Schwarze Luchs, you'll land on the right Landebahn. Pixy, on the left one." The Tauberg ATC operator said, as both planes were flying toward the air base with her open scissors-like runways.

"Ver." Both replied, and with this Belkan affirmation they lowered their gears. Iskanda was stunned to see how much damage her former wingman had taken and was still able to fly, fight and even land with it. Her, it was not the state of her plane that made her landing hard. But her own state, as her body was showing signs of tiredness, yawning every ten seconds.

To be fair, she did not remember the landing that much, as she was drifting into slumber. The shock of the runway did not even wake her up. Later, she would guess that she landed in subconscious, and for some people liking myths in her future "friends" that the hand of Saint Viktoria guided her or other funny things like that. 

**And so, this ends the Hoffnung arc, that took me quite a lot of time to write, with some writer's block, the whole covid-19 lockdown and some scholar stuff to do.  
** **Here, I decided to further introduced the ADFX-02 equipped with a TFLS and ERAAMs, but it's not finished yet (and to be honest I haven't chosen a cool name for it yet).  
I guess that those nuclear emergency power cells are something similar to what the Voyager probes have, but oriented toward power output instead of duration. Nuclear power will be a bit more used later on.  
I'll agree that I don't like Perrault, thus I decided to bully him a bit more. Who will complain ?  
** **About the whole high altitude sequence, I introduced a bit more of hardware to my alternate universe: the R-020 Tsybin, the M-21 and A-12 Oxcart (that I identified as A-71 to avoid confusion with the A-12 Avenger) and the D-21 recon drone. I hope you'll like those additions.  
** **And we got to see a bit more of the Griffon. To be honest, we'll see a lot more of it in the next chapters.**

 **Feel free to comment, subscribe, follow.**

 **Und bis nächst Mal, Lesern und Leserinnen.**


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